PORTRAIT  or  COUNT  RLTMFORD  -WHEN  SENT  TO  ENGLAND 
AS  AMBASSADOR  FROM  BAVARIA..   179  e  .  AGED   45. 


MEMOIR 


SIR   BENJAMIN   THOMPSON, 

COUNT   RUMFORD, 
WITH  NOTICES  OF  HIS  DAUGHTER. 

BY  GEORGE  E.  ELLIS. 


PUBLISHED  IN  CONNECTION   WITH  AN  EDITION  OF 
RUMFORD'S  COMPLETE  WORKS, 


BY  THE 

f  Jlrt*  attb 
BOSTON. 


BOSTON: 
ESTES     AND      LAURIAT, 

301  WASHINGTON  STREET. 


Cambridge : 
Press-work  by  John  Wilson  6*  Son. 


TO 
JACOB    BIGELOW,    M.  D. 

MY  DEAR  SIR  :  — 

IN  inscribing  this  volume  with  your  name,  without  having  asked  your 
permission  to  do  so,  I  must  seek  your  indulgence  after  the  act. 

There  is  no  name  which,  more  fitly  than  yours,  could  be  thus  brought 
into  connection  with  the  subject  of  the  volume.  As  the  first  incumbent 
of  the  Rumford  Professorship  in  Harvard  College,  you  paid  a  most  fe- 
licitous and  discriminating  tribute,  in  your  Inaugural  Address,  to  the  dis- 
tinguished man  who  founded  that  Professorship  by  a  generous  endow- 
ment, and  by  making  the  College  his  residuary  legatee.  You  initiated 
and  directed  a  method  of  fulfilling  the  duties  of  your  office  in  strict 
accordance  with  the  wishes  and  purposes  of  Count  Rumford,  especially 
with  a  view  to  those  ends  of  practical  public  good  which  he  so  ardently 
and  successfully  pursued.  Your  published  lectures,  The  Elements  of 
Technology,  have  recently  had  the  title  which  you  assigned  to  them 
adopted  by  an  Institution  of  highest  promise  with  us  in  its  field  and 
objects.  This  Institution,  also,  you  most  happily  inaugurated. 

You  presided  for  seventeen  years  over  the  American  Academy  of 
Arts  and  Sciences  with  an  ability  and  urbanity  of  which  the  Fellows 
expressed  to  you  their  heartiest  appreciation  when  you  declined  to  be 
longer  a  candidate  for  that  position ;  where  also  you  had  to  direct  the 
administration  of  another  generous  trust  confided  by  Count  Rumford  to 
the  Academy. 

Your  lengthened  life  and  professional  devotion,  while  they  have 
brought  you  to  stand  now  as  the  oldest  and  most  esteemed  physician  in 
the  city  of  your  residence,  have  likewise  permitted  you  to  indulge  your 
taste  and  genius  in  the  broadest  culture  of  the  many  provinces  of  litera- 
ture, art,  and  science  in  which  you  are  an  authority. 

I  may  not  put  into  print  the  epithets  and  encomiums  attached  to  your 
name  by  those  who  come  nearest  to  you  in  the  wide  circles  of  your 
friendship  and  personal  intercourse. 

Most  respectfully  yours, 

GEORGE    E.  ELLIS. 


Contents.  xiii 

biography  of  his  Daughter.  —  Extracts.  —  Her  Voyage.  —  Her 
Life  in  London.  —  Reception  of  his  Essays.  —  His  Employ- 
ments in  England.  —  Improved  Fireplaces.  —  Popularity  of  his 
Plans.  —  Rumford  Roasters.  —  Endowment  of  Royal  Society 
and  American  Academy.  —  Correspondence  with  Sir  Joseph 
Banks.  —  Awards  of  Rumford  Medal  by  the  Royal  Society.  — 
Correspondence  with  American  Academy.  —  Recognition  by 
the  Academy.  —  The  Rumford  Fund.  —  Action  of  the  Legis- 
lature, and  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  Equity  upon  the  Fund, 
and  its  Application.  —  Awards  of  the  Rumford  Medal  by  the 
Academy.  ..........  205 

CHAPTER     VI. 

Count  Rumford  and  his  Daughter  leave  England  for  Munich.  — 
Circuitous  Route  on  Account  of  the  War.  —  The  Journey  and 
its  Incidents.  —  Sarah  Thompson's  Diary.  — Arrival  in  Munich. 
—  Neutrality  of  Bavaria.  —  Munich  threatened  by  Austrian  and 
French  Armies.  —  Flight  of  the  Elector.  —  Rumford  on  the 
Council  of  the  Regency,  and  at  the  Head  of  the  Electoral 
Army.  —  His  Signal  Services  and  Success.  —  His  Scientific 
Feeding  of  the  Troops.  —  Gratitude  of  the  Elector  on  his  Re- 
turn. —  Correspondence  with  Sir  John  Sinclair.  —  Letters  to 
Colonel  Baldwin  and  President  Willard.  —  Private  Affairs  of 
the  Count  in  America.  —  Projected  Institution  in  Concord.  — 
Correspondence  concerning  it.  —  The  Countess's  Court  and 
Domestic  Life.  —  Excursions.  —  Festivals.  —  Commemoration 
of  the  Count's  Birthday.  —  Love  Passages.  —  Variances.  — 
Excursions.  —  The  Count  appointed  Ambassador  to  England, 
returns  there.  —  Not  received  as  such.  —  Correspondence.  — 
Honors  from  America.  —  Massachusetts  Historical  Society.  — 
Invitation  from  the  United  States  Government.  —  Correspond- 
ence. —  The  Countess  returns  to  America.  —  Her  Narrative.  — 
Correspondence.  ........  269 

CHAPTER     VII. 

Count  Rumford  as  Founder  of  the  Royal  Institution  of  Great 
Britain.  —  His  Plan  and  Proposals.  —  Correspondence  with 


xiv  Contents. 

Thomas  Bernard.  —  Sketch  of  the  Objects  and  Principles  of  the 
Institution.  —  Government  to  be  informed  of  the  Design.  — 
Meetings  of  Managers.  —  Character  and  Organization.  —  Gen- 
erous Patronage  by  the  Nobility.  —  Prospectus.  —  Building  pro- 
vided for  the  Institution.  —  Rumford's  Generous  Gifts.  —  He 
resides  in  the  Institution.  —  His  Illness.  —  Dr.  Young  appointed 
Professor,  Editor  of  Journal,  and  Superintendent.  —  Rumford 
visits  Harrowgate.  —  His  Essay  on  Warm  Bathing.  —  Corre- 
spondence. —  Colonel  Baldwin.  —  President  John  Adams. 
President  Willard.  —  The  Count's  Letter  to  Sir  H.  Davy, 
inviting  him  to  the  Royal  Institution.  —  Faraday's  Professorship 
and  Directorship.  —  Pictet's  Visit  to  Rumford,  and  Descrip- 
tion of  the  House  at  Brompton.  —  The  Bibliotheque  Britan- 
nique  on  the  Royal  Institution.  —  Alleged  Variances  among 
the  Managers.  —  Dr.  Young.  —  Progress  and  Course  of  the 
Institution.  .....  ...  378 


CHAPTER     VIII. 

Count  Rumford's  Fame  in  Bavaria,  Great  Britain,  and  the  United 
States.  —  Permanent  Results  of  his  Philanthropy.  —  Tribute  to 
him  from  Dr.  A.  Joly.  —  His  Institutions  in  Bavaria.  —  His 
Permanent  Influence  in  England  and  the  United  States.  —  Con- 
tinued Economical  and  Scientific  Experiments,  as  described  in 
his  Essays.  —  The  Propagation  of  Heat  in  Fluids  :  and  in  vari- 
ous Substances.  —  Inquiry  concerning  the  Source  of  the  Heat 
excited  by  Friction.  —  Rumford's  Claims  as  a  Discoverer.  — 
Depreciation  of  him  by  some  English  Authorities.  —  Economi- 
cal Inventions.  —  Franklin's  Fireplaces.  — Rumford's  Improve- 
ments. —  Essay  on  the  Construction  of  Kitchen  Fireplaces  and 
Utensils.  —  Savory  Food.  —  A  Chinese  Example.  —  Replies 
to  Critics  and  Jesters.  —  Appeal  to  the  Rich.  —  Pleasures  of 
Benevolence.  —  Essay  on  Open  Chimney  Fireplaces.  —  The 
Count's  Name  attached  to  other  than  his  own  Inventions.  — 
Essay  on  the  Salubrity  of  Warm  Rooms.  —  Essays  on  the  Man- 
agement of  Fires  in  closed  Fireplaces,  and  on  the  Use  of  Steam 
as  a  Vehicle  for  transporting  Heat.  —  Encomiums  on  Rumford's 
Benevolence  in  the  English  Parliament.  —  Cpbbett's  Satire, — 
Boston  follows  Rumford's  Method.  -  .  .  .  .  -451 


Contents.  xv 

CHAPTER     IX. 

Countess  Rumford  in  America.  —  Correspondence.  —  Letters  from 
her  Father.  —  Their  Fate.  —  Friendship  and  Letters  of  Sir 
Charles  Blagden.  —  His  Report  of  the  Count's  Matrimonial 
Purposes.  —  His  Confidential  Correspondence.  —  Information 
concerning  Count  Rumford.  —  Breach  of  Intercourse.  —  The 
Count  at  Munich  and  Paris.  —  His  Tour  with  Madame  Lavoi- 
sier. —  Sarah's  Account  and  Description  of  her  Father.  — 
His  Letters  from  England  and  Bavaria.  —  He  writes  to  his 
Daughter  of  his  Intended  Marriage,  and  sends  for  Legal  Docu- 
ments. —  His  Marriage  to  Madame  Lavoisier.  —  Happy  Pros- 
pects. —  Letters  from  Colonel  Baldwin.  —  Letters  from  Sir 
Charles  Blagden.  —  Unhappiness  of  the  Count  in  his  Marriage. 
—  His  Letters  continued.  —  Separates  from  his  Wife.  —  Sarah's 
Explanation.  —  The  Count  sends  for  his  Daughter.  —  His  Let- 
ters while  awaiting  her  Arrival.  —  His  Visit  to  Munich  and 
Welcome  Reception.  —  Monsieur  Guizot's  Memoir  of  Madame 
de  Rumford.  —  Tribute  to  her  by  the  Comtesse  de  Bassanville.  510 


CHAPTER     X. 

Count  Rumford  at  Auteuil.  —  Historical  and  Tragic  Interest  of 
his  Dwelling.  —  His  Daughter's  Voyage  to  rejoin  him.  —  Her 
Capture.  —  Correspondence  with  Sir  Charles  Blagden.  —  Her 
Arrival  at  Auteuil. —  Her  Letter  to  Mr.  J.  F.  Baldwin. —  The 
Count's  Letters  to  him.  —  The  Count's  Letters  to  his  Mother.  — 
The  Daughter's  Reception.  —  Description  of  her  Father's  Home 
and  Circumstances.  —  Visits  from  Madame  Lavoisier  de  Rum- 
ford.  —  Projected  Work  on  Order.  —  The  Count's  Scientific 
Labors  as  Foreign  Associate  of  the  French  Institute.  —  Papers 
read  before  it.  —  Three  more  Essays.  —  Experiments  of  Broad 
Wheels  for  Carriages.  —  His  Calorimeter  and  Photometer.  — 
Life  with  his  Daughter.  —  Drives  and  Visits.  —  His  Intimate 
Friends.  —  Visit  of  Davy  to  Auteuil.  —  The  Count's  last  Days. 
His  Death.  —  His  Daughter's  Strange  Notions  about  that  Event. 
Announcement  of  his  Death.  —  His  Funeral.  —  Baron  Deles- 
sert's  Address  at  his  Grave.  —  A  Woman's  Tribute.  —  Cuvier's 


xvi  Contents. 

Eloge.  —  Notices  of  the  Count's  Death  and  Character  in  Eng- 
land. —  Mr.  Underwood's  Sketch  of  him.  —  Dr.  Young's.  — 
Dr.  Thomson's.  —  Colonel  Baldwin's.  —  Count  Rumford's 
Grave  and  Monument. — His  last  Will.  —  Rumford  Professor- 
ship at  Harvard  College.  —  Dr.  Bigelow's  Discourse.  —  Profes- 
sor Treadwell  and  his  Successors. —  The  Daughter's  Subsequent 
Life  and  Correspondence.  —  Her  Final  Return  to  America.  — 
Her  Death  and  Bequests.  —  Rolfe.  —  Rumford  Institution.— 
Rumford's  Statue  at  Munich.  .  .  •  •  .  .586 


APPENDIX. 


To  page  13   

..  .  .  657 

a   n  ,  - 
45     ...... 

.  659 

"  "  67   

.  660 

"  "  94    .... 

.  663 

"   "  Q4. 

.  664 

"   «  150  

.  665 

«     "58S     .        o        - 

.  676 

INDEX         .  .  .678 


PREFACE. 


THE  circumstances  which  led  the  writer  to  the 
preparation  of  the  following  Biography  of  Count 
Rumford  may  properly  be  mentioned  here. 

In  one  of  a  series  of  letters  with  which  I  was  favored 
by  my  much-esteemed  friend,  the  Hon.  Robert  C. 
Winthrop,  —  also  my  associate  on  the  Council  of  the 
Academy,  — during  his  last  European  tour,  was  a  pas- 
sage which  I  here  copy.  The  letter  was  dated  Munich, 
August  19,  1867. 

"  You  have  not  forgotten  how'  much  there  is  here 
to  remind  an  American  of  his  own  country.  No  one 
could  drive  in  the  beautiful  English  Garden  (as  it  is 
called)  without  remembering  with  pride  that  it  was 
originally  laid  out  by  Benjamin  Thompson,  Count 
Rumford,  who  would  almost  seem  to  have  been  driven 
from  his  native  land  (by  unjust  suspicions  and  preju- 
dices, as  I  have  always  feared)  in  order  to  give  him 
a  wider  sphere  for  doing  good  to  mankind.  We 
have  never  done  honor  enough  to  his  memory  in 
America.  Is  there  any  portrait  of  him  at  Harvard, 
where  he  endowed  so  valuable  a  Professorship  ?  I 
do  not  remember  any.  [Mr.  Winthrop  for  the  mo- 


vi  Preface. 

ment  forgot  the  excellent  portrait  of  the  Count,  the  gift 
of  his  daughter,  which  hangs  in  Massachusetts  Hall, 
Cambridge.]  There  ought  to  be  a  statue  of  him  some- 
where in  America.  I  am  glad  to  find  that  there  is  to 
be  one  here.  At  the  foundry  here,  a  day  or  two  since, 
I  found  them  actually  engaged  in  casting  one  to  adorn 
one  of  the  squares  of  Munich.  This  foundry  itself 
is  a  most  interesting  place  to  Americans.  The  mu- 
seum connected  with  it  contains  the  original  models 
of  all  the  statues  which  have  been  cast  here.  There  I 
found  ....  But,  after  all,  I  think  the  Rumford  statue 
gave  me  the  greatest  satisfaction.  It  is  a  tardy  act 
of  justice  to  one  who  did  really  great  things  for  the 
world,  as  well  as  for  Bavaria.  His  Essays  on  Pauper- 
ism, and  his  plans  for  its  relief  and  prevention,  would 
alone  entitle  him  to  the  blessing  of  mankind.  Almost 
everything  which  is  valuable  in  our  modern  systems 
of  charity  may  be  traced  in  his  writings.  When  we 
add  all  that  he  did  for  science,  and  for  the  advance- 
ment of  science,  at  the  Royal  Institution  in  London, 
and  at  Harvard,  and  at  our  American  Academy,  his 
claim  to  a  statue  seems  to  be  far  less  equivocal,  to 
say  the  least,  than  that  of  many  of  those  who  have 
lately  received  such  commemoration.  I  trust  we  shall 
have  a  portrait  of  him,  one  of  these  days,  in  the  gallery 
of  our  Historical  Society,  if  nowhere  else." 

As  I  could  not  have  a  more  fitting  introduction  to 
this  volume  than  is  found  in  that  most  just  tribute 
to  Count  Rumford,  so  admirably  expressed,  so  I  most 


Preface.  vii 

gratefully  acknowledge  that  my  share  in  this  work  came 
of  my  possession  of  the  letter  which  contained  the 
above  matter.  I  had  the  letter,  just  received,  in  my 
pocket,  while  attending  one  of  the  regular  meetings 
of  the  Academy.  And  it  so  happened,  likewise,  that 
among  the  matters  of  business  which  occupied  the 
meeting  was  a  report  of  progress  from  the  Rumford 
Committee  of  the  Academy,  in  the  trust  assigned  to 
them  of  collecting  and  editing  the  works  of  our  emi- 
nent benefactor.  Knowing  that  I  had  with  me  some- 
thing so  appropriate  to  the  matter  then  in  hand,  I 
read  to  the  Academy  the  above  extract  from  the  letter 
of  our  associate.  I  mentioned,  likewise,  that  I  had 
in  my  house  and  had  recently  been  reading  with 
great  interest  the  contents  of  a  very  valuable  manu- 
script volume,  loaned  to  me  by  its  owner,  my  valued 
friend,  George  Rumford  Baldwin,  Esq.,  of  Woburn, 
in  which  he  had  carefully  copied  the  correspondence 
of  Count  Rumford  with  his  father,  the  late  Colonel 
Loammi  Baldwin,  and  many  other  papers  of  bio- 
graphical use.  I  suggested  that  possibly  the  Rum- 
ford  Committee  might  find  help  in  examining  these 
documents.  A  proposition  was  then  made  and  urged, 
that  I  be  requested  to  furnish  a  biographical  memoir 
of  the  Count  as  introductory  to  the  edition  of  his 
Works.  Though  surprised  at  the  request,  and  wholly 
unprepared  to  comply  with  it,  I  consented  to  enter- 
tain and  consider  it.  I  had  no  other  expectation  or 
purpose,  in  finally  acceding  to  it,  than  that  all  which 


viii  Preface. 

I  should  need  to  do  in  the  case  would  be  to  gather 
from  published  sources  the  materials  for  a  brief  prefatory 
paper,  which  should  give  the  dates  and  principal  events 
and  labors  of  the  Count's  career.  In  undertaking  to 
do  only  this,  the  search  and  inquiry  which  were  neces- 
sary led  on  to  further  investigations,  rewarded  by  such 
an  amount  of  authentic  and  interesting  documents  as  in 
the  view  of  the  Rumford  Committee  justified  the  assign- 
ing of  an  additional  volume  for  the  memoir.  As  will 
be  noticed  by  the  reader,  the  new  material  used  in 
the  following  pages  -is  mostly  of  manuscripts  gathered 
from  public  and  private  sources.  I  have  indicated 
these  sources  either  in  the  text  or  the  notes  of  this 
volume. 

The  Life  of  Count  Rumford  contributed  by  Pro- 
fessor Renwick  to  Sparks's  Library  of  American  Biog- 
raphy, allowing  for  its  necessary  compactness,  is  a  very 
excellent  performance.  The  writer,  I  suppose,  had  the 
use  of  some  of  the  Baldwin  manuscripts  above  referred 
to.  Professor  Pictet,  in  some  letters  of  his  published 
in  the  BiblioMque  Britannique,  furnished  the  substance 
of  the  matter  which  appears  in  the  biographical  sketches 
of  Count  Rumford  contained  in  the  Encyclopaedias  and 
Biographical  Dictionaries,  all  of  which  are  imperfect, 
and  which  repeat  the  same  errors,  trivial  and  impor- 
tant. Colonel  Baldwin's  series  of  four  articles  on  the 
Count's  life  and  labors,  published  in  two  volumes  of 
the  Literary  Miscellany,  while  the  Count  was  living, 
have  a  particular  value. 


Preface.  ix 

Besides  the  acknowledgments  that  will  be  found  in 
the  following  pages,  made  to  friends  for  whose  aid 
and  suggestions  I  am  under  obligations  to  them,  I 
must  make  here  a  special  mention  of  the  kind  and 
helpful  assistance,  sympathy,  and  information  which 
I  have  received  from  Mr.  George  Rumford  Baldwin  of 
Woburn,  Massachusetts  ;  Mr.  Joseph  B.  Walker, 
of  Concord,  New  Hampshire;  Dr.  H.  Bence  Jones, 
of  London,  Secretary  of  the  Royal  Institution  of 
Great  Britain  ;  Mons.  Jules  Marcou,  of  Paris ;  and 
Mr.  G.  Henry  Horstmann,  United  States  Consul  at 
Munich. 

A  search  which  I  was  privileged  to  make  among 
the  effects  of  Sarah,  Countess  of  Rumford,  in  Concord, 
New  Hampshire,  was  rewarded,  as  will  be  seen,  by  the 
discovery  of  much  curious  and  interesting  matter. 

I  hardly  need  to  add,  that,  though  I  have  done  this 
work  as  a  labor  of  love  in  the  service,  as  well  as  at 
the  request,  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and 
Sciences,  I  alone  am  responsible  for  any  errors  which 
it  may  contain,  and  for  the  statements  and  opinions 
expressed  in  it. 

G.  E.  E. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER     I . 

PAGE 

Benjamin    Franklin    and    Benjamin    Thompson.  —  Ancestry    and 
Family  of  Thompson.  —  His    Birth.  —  Death    of  his    Father. 

—  His  early  Education.  —  His  own  Account  of  his  early  Years. 

—  His  Friends  and  Guardians.  —  His  School  Days.  —  Appren- 
ticeship at  Salem.  —  Accident.  —  Return  to  Woburn.  —  Memo- 
randa.—  Apprenticeship  in  Boston.  —  Medical  Student.  —  School- 
Teacher.  —  Marriage.  —  Military  Commission.  —  Farmer.        .        i 


CHAPTER     II. 

Revolutionary  Portents. — Division  of  Parties.  —  Governor  Went- 
worth.  —  Thompson's  Visits  to  Portsmouth. —  Military  Review. 
—  Intimacy  and  Favor  with  the  Governor.  —  Commissioned 
Major. — Jealousies  and  Enmities.  —  Accused  of  Toryism. — 
Meditated  Outrage.  —  Flight  from  Concord.  —  Refuge  in  Wo- 
burn, Charlestown,  and  Boston.  —  His  Petition  and  Examina- 
tion. —  Letters  to  Rev.  Mr.  Walker.  —  Visits  the  Camp.  —  Seeks 
Employment.  —  Departure. —  Newport.  —  Secret  Residence  in 
Boston.  —  Sent  to  England.  —  Confiscation  of  his  Property.  — 
Proscribed.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  -55 


CHAPTER     III. 

Major  Thompson's  Mission  to  Lord  G.  Germaine.  —  His  Services 
to  the  Ministry.  —  Made  Secretary  of  Georgia.  —  Explores 
London.  —  Objects  of  his  Interest. — Experiments.  —  Visit  to 
Bath. — Guest  of  Lord  George.  —  Fire-Arms  and  Gunpow- 


xii  Contents. 

der.  —  Sir  Joseph  Banks.  —  Naval  Service,  and    Experiments. 

—  Made  Under-Secretary  of  State.  —  Loyalists  in  England. — 
Judge  Curwen.  —  Dr.   Gardiner. —  President    Laurens.  —  Dis- 
astrous Intelligence.  —  Thompson  commissioned  as  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  for  Service  in  America.  —  Arrival  in  Charleston,  S.  C. 

—  In  Action  there.  —  Arrival  in  New  York.  —  His  Command. 

—  Recruiting.  —  Presentation     of    Colors.  —  Severe     Charges 
against  Thompson.  —  Colonel  Simcoe's  Reflections.  —  Returns 
to  England.  —  Promotion.  —  On  Half-Pay  for  Life.  —  Agency 

for  Loyalists.          .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .100 


CHAPTER     IV. 

Thompson  receives  Permission  to  travel  on  the  Continent. — 
Gibbon  and  Laurens. —  Meeting  with  Maximilian  de  Deux 
Ponts. —  Intercourse  with  French  Officers.  —  Visits  Munich. 

—  Goes  to  Vienna.  —  Returns,  by  Invitation  of  the  Elector,  to 
Munich.  —  In  England.  —  Knighted.  —  Permitted  to  enter  the 
Service  of  the  Elector.  —  His  Career  "and  Services  in  Bavaria. 

—  Offices  and  Honors.  —  Schemes.  —  Essays.  —  Years  of  Prepa- 
ration.—  Work-Houses  at  Mannheim  and  Munich.  —  Military 
Reforms.  —  Soldiers'     Gardens.  —  Mendicancy  :     its     Abuses, 
Measures  for  its  Removal.  —  Wise  and  Efficient  Plans.  —  Seiz- 
ure of  Beggars.  —  Experiments  on  Food.  —  Minor  Schemes  of 
Reforms.  —  Sickness.  —  Travels  in    Italy  and    Switzerland.  — 
Visits  to  Hospitals  and  Poor-Houses.  —  Returns  to   Munich. — 
Convalescence.  —  Writes    his   Essays.  —  Goes    to    England.  — 
Economical    Schemes    there.  —  Publishes    his    Essays.  —  Visits 
Ireland.  —  Sends  for  his  Daughter.  ..... 


CHAPTER     V. 

Count  Rumford's  Family  in  America.  —  Correspondence  with 
Baldwin  resumed.  —  Prepares  for  his  Daughter.  —  Correspond- 
ence of  Sarah  Thompson.  —  Friendship  of  President  Willard  of 
Harvard  College.  —  Thompson's  Provision  for  his  Mother.  — 
Sends  over  his  Essays.  —  Intention  to  visit  America.  —  Auto- 


LIFE  OF   COUNT   RUMFORD. 


CHAPTER    I. 

Benjamin  Franklin  and  Benjamin  Thompson.  —  Ancestry  and 
Family  of  Thompson.  —  His  Birth.  —  Death  of  his  Father. 

—  His  early  Education.  —  His  own  Account  of  his  early 
Tears.  —  His  Friends  and  Guardians.  —  His  School  Days. 

—  Apprenticeship  at  Salem.  —  Accident.  —  Return  to  Wo- 
lurn.  — Memoranda.  —  Apprenticeship  in  Boston.  —  Medi- 
cal Student.  —  School-Teacher.  —  Marriage.  —  Military 
Commission.  - —  Farmer. 

MASSACHUSETTS,  during  the  second  period  of 
its  history,  —  when,  as  a  Province,  it  received  its 
chief  magistrate  and  the  authority  for  its  administration 
of  government  from  the  mother  country, — gave  birth  to 
two  men  the  most  distinguished  for  philosophical  genius 
of  all  that  have  been  produced  on  the  soil  of  this  con- 
tinent. They  were  Benjamin  Franklin  and  Benjamin 
Thompson.  They  came  into  life  in  humble  homes, 
within  twelve  miles  of  each  other,  under  like  straits  and 
circumstances  of  frugality  and  substantial  thrift.  They 
both  sprang  from  English  lineage,  of  an  ancestry  and 
parentage  yeomen  on  the  soil  on  either  continent,  to  be 
cast,  as  their  progenitors  had  been,  upon  their  own 
exertions,  without  dependence  upon  inherited  means,  or 
patronage,  or  even  good  fortune.  Born  as  subjects  of 


',2  Life  of  Count  Rumford* 

the  English  monarch,  they  both,  at  different  periods  of 
their  lives,  claimed  their  privileges  as  such,  visiting  their 
ancestral  soil,  though  under  widely  unlike  circumstan- 
ces, and  there  winning  fame  and  distinction  for  services 
to  humanity.  We  almost  forget  the  occasion  which 
parted  them  in  the  sphere  of  politics,  because  they 
come  so  close  together  in  the  more  engrossing  and 
beneficent  activity  of  their  genius. 

I  cannot  learn  that  these  two  eminent  men,  with  so 
much  that  was  common  between  them  in  their  interests 
and  pursuits,  ever  met  together,  or  sought  each  other's 
acquaintance,  or  even  recognized  each  other's  existence, 
though  they  were  contemporaries  for  more  than  thirty 
years,  were  both  in  Europe  —  the  one  in  England,  the 
other  in  France  —  for  six  of  those  years,  and  were 
intimate  in  friendship  or  correspondence  with  some  of 
the  same  distinguished  persons. 

In  the  best  work  of  their  several  lives  they  sought 
to  do,  and  eminently  succeeded  in  doing,  what  should 
prove  effective  of  good  to  their  common  humanity  in 
the  ordinary  interests  of  existence,  without  distinction 
of  class,  and  without  a  view  to  any  personal  ends  of 
thrift  or  glory.  Nor  is  there  ground  or  occasion  for 
any  broad  distinction  in  our  estimate  of  the  moral  char- 
acter or  of  the  private  life  of  these  two  eminent  men. 
Neither  of  them  had  in  his  early,  nor  even  in  his  later, 
years  that  rigid  purity  of  principle  which  insured  that 
all  his  domestic  relations  should  be  such  as  would 
admit  of  record,  according  to  the  good  New  England 
usage,  on  the  few  blank  leaves  between  the  Old  and  the 
New  Testament  in  the  family  Bible.  There  are  details 
concerning  both  these  Benjamins  of  a  sort  which  their 
biographers  must  pass  unmentioned,  thankful  if  only 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  3 

they   can   be   referred    to   foreign   soil  and  foreign   cus- 
toms. 

The  services  of  Franklin  as  a  patriotic  statesman  lift 
him  on  a  higher  pedestal.  Yet  two  widely  discordant 
opinions  have  been  held  and  expressed  as  to  the  general 
effect  on  the  qualities  of  nobleness  and  unworldliness 
of  character,  as  illustrated  in  New  England,  of  his  cal- 
culating, prudential,  and  thrift-bringing  philosophy.  If, 
according  to  what  we  shall  find  was  the  judgment  of  one 
of  Benjamin  Thompson's  most  intimate  friends,  —  his 
eulogist,  also, — we  shall  see  reason  to  admit  that  he 
did  not  really  love  his  fellow-men,  and  could  not  yield 
even  his  own  self-will  and  conform  his  own  personal 
habits  to  the  ordinary  conditions  of  sympathetic  in- 
tercourse, we  may  be  led  to  recognize  all  the  more 
gratefully  his  patient,  persistent,  and  ingenious  indus- 
try, given  in  so  many  ways  to  ends  of  true  benevo- 
lence. 

Benjamin  Thompson  came  on  both  sides  of  his 
parentage  from  the  original  stock  of  the  first  colonists 
of  Massachusetts  Bay.  When,  in  his  thirty-first  year, 
he  had  attained  such  distinction  in  England  as  to  receive 
the  honor  of  knighthood  from  King  George  III.,  he 
was  naturally  concerned  to  provide  himself  with  proper 
armorial  bearings,  and,  if  possible,  to  appropriate  such 
as  might  already  be  attached  to  the  name  which  he  bore. 
He  could  not  have  done  better  than  to  adopt  a  device 
which,  as  we  shall  soon  see,  was  the  product  of  his  own 
youthful  ingenuity  alike  in  designing  and  in  engraving, 
and  equally  characteristic  of  his  nature,  circumstances, 
and  prospects  in  life.  But  he  seems  to  have  forgotten 
this,  and  to  have  aimed  higher,  in  this  instance  failing  in 
his  flight.  His  emblazoned  diploma  of  arms  is  now 


4 


'Life 'of  Coitnt  Ritmford. 


before  me  in  all  its  original  glory  and  beauty,  with  its 
rich  adornments,  and  the  proper  attestations  of  Garter 
and  Clarenceux  kings  in  heraldry,  and  their  well-pro- 
tected seals,  enclosed  in  tin  casings.  The  Knight  him- 
self must  have  furnished  the  information  written  on  that 
flowery  parchment. 

In  it  he  is  described  as  "  Son  of  Benjamin  Thomp- 
son, late  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  in  New 
England,  Gent :  deceased,  and  as  of  one  of  the  most 
ancient  families  in  North  America;  that  an  island  which 
belonged  to  his  ancestors  at  the  entrance  of  Boston  Har- 
bor, near  where  the  first  New  England  settlement  was 
made,  still  bears  his  name ;  that  his  ancestors  have  ever 
lived  in  reputable  situations  in  that  country  where  he 
was  born,  and  have  hitherto  used  the  arms  of  the  ancient 
and  respectable  family  of  Thompson,  of  the  county  of 
York,  from  a  constant  tradition  that  they  derived  their 
descent  from  that  source,"  &c. 

The  new  knight  was  mistaken  in  this  account  of 
himself,  so  far  as  relates  to  the  man  whose  name  is  still 
borne  by  the  island  in  our  harbor.  That  name  was  de- 
rived from  one  David  Thompson,  whom  the  first  charter 
colonists  to  our  bay  found  already  seated  here,  and  who 
was  regarded  as  an  interloper.  He  belonged  to  a  mys- 
terious class  of  men,  described  as  the  "  Old  Planters," 
who  occupied  many  of  the  headlands  and  some  of  the 
islands  of  the  bay,  and  could  show  no  rights  of  posses- 
sion. This  Thompson  died  in  Dorchester  before  1638, 
leaving  an  infant  son. 

Before  the  son  of  this  Thompson  had  grown  to  man- 
hood, indeed  almost  as  soon  as  we  hear  of  the  father, 
the  ancestors  of  the  subject  of  this  memoir  were  already 
in  occupancy  on  the  main-land.  The  head  of  the  family 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  5 

here  may  have  come  from  York,  in  England,  though 
the  fact  is  not  on  record.  His  first  paternal  ancestor, 
James  Thompson,  was  of  Winthrop's  company,  and  at 
the  age  of  thirty-seven  was  in  Charlestown,  in  1630. 
He  was  one  of  the  first  settlers  of  that  portion  of  the 
original  bounds  of  the  town  which,  running  more  than 
ten  miles  up  into  the  country,  was  soon  set  off  as  a 
separate  precinct  under  the  name  of  Woburn.  Here 
the  family  with  numerous  descendants  and  branches 
continued  till  the  birth  of  our  subject,  as  many  that 
sprung  from  the  first  comer  do  to  this  day.  He  him- 
self was  a  man  of  worth,  position,  and  trust  in  an 
arduous  enterprise,  being  one  of  the  "  selectmen "  of 
the  town,  and  he  lived  nearly  to  the  age  of  ninety. 

Captain  Ebenezer  Thompson  and  Hannah  Convers 
were  the  grandparents,  Benjamin  Thompson  and  Ruth 
Sirnonds  were  the  father  and  mother,  of  our  subject;  the 
mother  being  the  daughter  of  an  officer  who  performed 
distinguished  service  in  the  French  and  Indian  War, 
which  was  in  progress  at  the  time  of  the  birth  of  his 
eminent  grandson.  The  parents  were  married  in  1752, 
and  went  to  live  at  the  house  of  Captain  Ebenezer 
Thompson.  Here,  under  his  grandfather's  roof,  the 
future  Count  Rumford  was  born,  March  26,  1753,  in 
the  west  end  of  the  strong  and  substantial  farm-house 
which  is  still  standing  a  few  rods  south  of  the  meeting- 
house in  North  Woburn.  This  house  was,  till  quite 
recently,  occupied  by  the  Count's  first  cousin,  the  widow 
of  Willard  Jones.* 

The  father  of  our  subject  died  November  7,  1754,  in 
his  twenty-sixth  year,  leaving  his  wife  and  her  child, 
hardly  twenty  months  old,  to  the  care  and  support  of 

*  Sewall's  History  of  Woburn,  p.  390,  &c. 


6  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

the  grandparents.  In  March,  1756,  when  the  child 
was  three  years  old,  his  widowed  mother  was  married  to 
Josiah  Pierce,  Jr.,  of  Woburn.  Mr.  Pierce  took  his 
wife  and  her  child  to  a  new  home,  which,  now  removed, 
stood  but  a  short  distance  from  the  old  homestead, 
opposite  the  present  conspicuous  and  venerable  Baldwin 
mansion. 

The  Biographic  Nouve/Ie,.  in  its  article  on  Count 
Rumford,  says  that  he  would  have  been  left  in  his 
infancy  to  absolute  destitution,  had  not  his  grandfather 
taken  pity  on  him.  The  article  in  the  Encyclopedia 
Britannic  a  says  that  the  child's  step-father  banished  him 
from  his  mother's  house  almost  in  his  infancy.  Chal- 
mers's Biography  substantially  repeats  the  statements. 
These  are  drawn  from,  and  are  .supposed  to  be  warranted 
by,  certain  particulars  given  by  M.  A.  Pictet,  in  the 
EibliotHeque  Britannique.  Pictet  was  an  intimate,  con- 
fidential, and  admiring  friend  of  Count  Rumford, 
and  has  recorded  much  very  interesting  information 
concerning  him  which  can  be  got  from  no  other  source. 
I  shall  have  occasion  by  and  by  to  draw  largely  and 
gratefully  from  that  information.  Meanwhile,  it  is  in 
place  here  to  say  that  while  M.  Pictet  was  on  a  visit  to 
England  in  1801,  he  spent  several  days  in  the  house 
of  Count  Rumford,  at  Brompton  Row,  as  his  guest, 
and  was  wont  to  draw  from  him  confidentially  par- 
ticulars of  his  life,  of  which  he  took  notes  for  subse- 
quent publication. 

I  anticipate  the  relation  of  this  friendship  and  its 
results  so  far  as  to  translate  from  Pictet  such  matter  as 
has  been  made  the  basis  of  the  at  least  over-colored 
statements  that  have  been  referred  to.  It  will  be  noticed 
by  the  error  in  the  first  paragraph  following,  that  Pictet, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  7 

though  he  might  have  been  a  close  listener,  was  not 
a  perfectly  accurate  reporter  of  his  friend's  communi- 
cations. 

"  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson,  Count  Rumford,  whom  half 
Europe  takes  to  be  an  Englishman,  was  born  in  North  Amer- 
ica in  1753.  His  family,  of  English  origin,  was  long  settled  in 
New  Hampshire,  and  lived  in  a  place  formerly  called  Rumford, 
and  now  Concord,  and  owned  land  there  before  the  war  of 
Independence. 

"  '  If  the  death  of  my  father,'  he  said  to  me  one  day,  '  had 
not,  contrary  to  the  order  of  nature,  preceded  that  of  my  grand- 
father, who  gave  all  his  property  to  my  uncle,  his  second  son,  I 
should  have  lived  and  died  an  American  husbandman.  This 
was  a  circumstance  purely  accidental,  which,  while  I  was  still 
an  infant,  decided  my  destiny  in  attracting  my  attention  to  ob- 
jects of  science.  The  father  of  one  of  my  companions,  a  very 
respectable  minister,  and,  besides,  very  enlightened,  (by  name, 
Bernard,)  gave  me  his  friendship,  and,  of  his  own  prompting, 
undertook  to  instruct  me.  He  taught  me  algebra,  geometry, 
astronomy,  and  even  the  higher  mathematics.  Before  the  age 
of  fourteen,  I  had  made  sufficient  progress  in  this  class  of  studies 
to  be  able  without  his  aid,  and  even  without  his  knowledge,  to 
calculate  and  trace  rightly  the  elements  of  a  solar  eclipse.  We 
observed  it  together,  and  my  computation  was  correct  within  four 
seconds.  I  shall  never  forget  the  intense  pleasure  which  this 
success  afforded  me,  nor  the  praises  which  it  drew  from  him. 
I  had  been  destined  for  trade,  but. after  a  short  trial  my  thirst 
for  knowledge  became  inextinguishable,  and  I  could  not  apply 
myself  to  anything  but  my  favorite  objects  of  study.  I  attended 
the  lectures  of  Dr.  Williams,  and  afterwards  those  of  Dr. 
Winthrop,  at  Harvard  College,  and  I  made  under  that  happy 
teacher  a  sufficiently  rapid  progress.' 

" c  But  at  the  age  you  then  were,'  said  I  to  him,  '  is  a  young 
man  the  master  of  his  own  actions  ?  How  could  you  follow 
so,  without  opposition,  the  sort  of  instinct  which  carried  you  to- 
wards a  vocation  so  different  from  that  which  had  been  destined 
for  you  ? ' 


8  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  '  Ah  ! '  he  replied,  c  shortly  after  the  death  of  my  father  my 
mother  contracted  a  second  marriage,  which  proved  for  her  a 
source  of  misfortunes.  A  tyrannical  husband  took  me  away 
from  my  grandfather's  house  with  her.  I  was  then  a  child  ;  my 
grandfather,  who  survived  my  father  only  a  few  months,  left 
me  but  a  very  slender  subsistence.  I  was  then  launched  at  the 
right  time  upon  a  world  which  was  almost  strange  to  me,  and  I 
was  obliged  to  form  the  habit  of  thinking  and  acting  for  myself, 
and  of  depending  on  myself  for  a  livelihood.  My  ideas  were 
not  yet  fixed ;  one  project  succeeded  another,  and  perhaps  I 
should  have  acquired  a  habit  of  indecision  and  inconstancy,  per- 
haps I  should  have  been  poor  and  unhappy  all  my  life,  if  a 
woman  had  not  loved  me, — if  she  had  not  given  me  a  subsis- 
tence, a  home,  an  independent  fortune.' 

" '  I  married,  or,  rather,  I  was  married,  at  the  age  of  nine- 
teen. I  espoused  the  widow  of  a  Colonel  Rolfe,  daughter  of  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Walker,  a  highly  respectable  minister,  and  one  of  the 
first  settlers  of  Rumford.  He  was  already  connected  with  my 
family.  He  had  made  three  voyages  to  England  on  matters  of 
public  interest.  He  was  a  very  cultivated  man,  and  of  a  most 
generous  character.  He  heartily  approved  of  the  choice  of  his 
daughter,  and  he  himself  united  our  destinies.  This  excellent 
man  became  sincerely  attached  to  me  ;  he  directed  my  studies, 
he  formed  my  taste,  and  my  position  was  in  every  respect  the 
most  agreeable  that  could  possibly  be  imagined.' 

"  Here  a  pang  of  feeling  checked  him.  I  dropped  the  subject 
till  the  next  day.  Such  are  my  notes. 

"  Unexpected  circumstances  drew  him  from  this  peaceful 
retreat,  and  snatched  him  from  those  favorite  studies  which 
would  probably  have  formed  the  principal  occupation  of  his 
life,  in  order  that  he  might  play  a  part  on  the  great  stage  of 
the  world,  for  which  he  would  not  seem  to  have  been  pre- 
pared." * 

*  Marc  Auguste  Pictet  was  born  in  1752,  in  Geneva,  where  he  died  in  1825.  He 
was  highly  distinguished  as  a  philosopher  in  Natural  Science,  and  as  a  statesman  and 
man  of  letters,  founder  of  the  Society  of  Physics  at  Geneva,  and  member  of  the 
French  Institute  and  the  Royal  Society.  In  1796,  with  his  brother  Charles,  and 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  9 

There  are  several  matters  in  this  relation  which  will  call 
for  remark  further  on.  At  present  we  are  concerned 
with  those  sentences  in  it  which  reflect  upon  Thomp- 
son's relatives,  especially  his  step-father,  —  charges  of 
neglecting,  wronging,  or  ill-treating  him  in  his  early 
years.  Baron  Cuvier,  who  was  a  very  intimate  friend 
of  Count  Rumford  in  the  latter  part  of  his  life,  and 
who  delivered  an  eloge  upon  him  before  the  French  In- 
stitute, said  in  it  something  very  similar  to  the  above, 
the  authority  for  which  must  be  supposed  to  be  either 
a  communication  from  .the  Count  himself,  or  the  asser- 
tions made  by  Pictet. 

Cuvier  said :  "  Rumford  has  informed  us  himself 
that  he  should  probably  have  remained  in  the  modest 
condition  of  his  ancestors  if  the  little  fortune  which  they 
had  to  leave  him  had  not  been  lost  during  his  infancy. 
Thus,  like  many  other  men  of  genius,  a  misfortune  in 
early  life  was  the  cause  of  his  subsequent  reputation. 
His  father  died  young.  A  second  husband  removed 
him  from  the  care  of  his  mother,  and  his  grandfather, 
from  whom  he  had  everything  to  expect,  had  given  all 
he  possessed  to  a  younger  son,  leaving  his  grandson 
almost  penniless.  Nothing  could  be  more  likely  than 
such  a  destitute  .condition  to  induce  a  premature  display 
of  talent,"*  &c. 

Now,  if  these  statements  and  imputations  really  rest 
upon  positive  assertions  made  by  him  whom  they  con- 

F.  G.  Maurice,  he  planned  and  edited  the  voluminous  periodical  work,  the  BibliothZquc 
Britannique,  which,  in  1816,  became  the  BibliothZque  Universelle. 

His  ten  letters,  embracing  his  tour  in  England,  Ireland,  and  Scotland,  were  re- 
published  in  a  volume  at  Geneva.  The  above  extract  in  the  text  is  translated  from 
his  ninth  letter,  dated  London,  i£th  August,  1801.  (Vol.  XIX.  Science  et  Arts.} 

*  Cuvier's  Eloge.  A  translation  of  this  Eloge  appeared  in  the  Boston  Daily  Adver- 
tiser of  the  1 8th  and  I9th  October,  1815. 


io  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

cern,  it  might  seem  unnecessary  and  unreasonable  to  go 
behind  them  and  dispute  them.  Yet  we  know  for  a 
certainty  that  they  do  contain  errors,  and  there  is  room 
for  supposing  that  Count  Rumford's  friends  might  have 
misunderstood  him,  and  that,  being  both  of  them  French- 
men, they  may  themselves  have  erred  in  a  matter  of 
sentiment,  by  exaggerated  expressions.  It  is  possible, 
too,  that,  looking  back  from  his  state  of  popular  ce- 
lebrity, comfort,  and  affluence,  the  Count  himself  may 
have  seen  the  hardships  of  his  early  years  as  unre- 
lieved. 

It  is  certain,  however,  that  there  is  exaggeration  or 
over-coloring  in  what  is  reported  as  having  come  from 
his  lips.  Young  Thompson  was  born  in  the  same  state 
of  life,  and  to  the  same  conditions  of  labor  and  personal 
dependence,  as  those  of  his  ancestors  for  several  gene- 
rations, who,  tilling  their  acres,  cutting  their  lumber 
and  fuel,  and  working  at  their  varied  trades,  had  won 
the  means  of  a  frugal  subsistence,  and  maintained  the 
respectable  position  of  New  England  yeomen.  True, 
it  was  a  misfortune  to  him  that  he  lost  his  father  before 
he  was  two  years  old.  But  he  had  an  excellent  mother, 
who  never  neglected  him,  but  seems  to  have  treated  him 
with  a  redoubled  love.  His  own  letters  to  her  from 
abroad,  after  he  had  achieved  his  great  distinctions, — 
letters  continued  to  the  close  of  her  life  and  full  of 
affection,  —  and  the  munificent  pecuniary  provision 
which  he  made  for  her,  will  be  duly  recognized  in  the 
course  of  this  biography,  as  showing  the  tender  and 
grateful  regard  of  the  son  for  the  mother. 

As  to  the  cc  tyrannical  step-father "  who  cc  removed 
him  from  the  care  of  his  mother,"  I  have  sought  in 
vain  for  a  shadow  of  a  reason  to  justify  the  harsh 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  u 

epithet,  and  have  evidence  that  disposes  of  the  other 
charge  as  purely  fictitious.  Josiah  Pierce,  Jr.,  appears 
to  have  been  a  kind  and  faithful  husband,  and,  as  has 
been  said,  he  took  his  wife's  child  with  her  to  a  new 
home.  They  had  afterwards  four  children.  Her  first 
child  by  this  new  husband,  Josiah  Pierce,  jd,  about 
four  years  younger  than  Benjamin  Thompson,  grew 
up  with  him  as  a  playmate,  and  in  after  life  corre- 
sponded with  him.  The  son  of  this  half-brother  of 
Thompson,  the  Hon.  Josiah  Pierce,  of  Gorham,  Me., 
had  heard  nothing  from  his  father  that  would  warrant  an 
imputation  of  the  sort  we  are  considering.* 

It  was  not  usual  among  the  self-respecting  groups  of 
New  England  households,  —  the  staple  of  the  thrifty 
country  towns  of  those  days,  where  there  was  a  minister 
that  had  authority,  where  neighbors  had  mutual  over- 
sight, and  the  law  and  its  officers  had  cognizance  of 
private  relations  now  released  from  its  control,  —  it  was 
not  usual  that  a  fatherless  child  should  be  wronged  in 
property  rights,  or  even  in  domestic  privileges.  Indeed, 
so  far  was  young  Thompson  from  being  neglected  or 
misused  in  his  early  years,  that  it  seems  from  the  facts 
to  be  now  related  of  his  boyhood  and  apprenticeship, 
he  was,  for  one  in  his  place,  unusually  favored  by  friends 
and  by  fostering  help.  There  were  evidently  many  of 
his  kindred,  and  of  those  who  were  not  of  his  kindred, 
who  were  interested  for  him.  It  is  to  be  considered, 

*  In  Volume  XXXIII.  of  Silliman's  American  Journal  of  Science,  &c.,  p.  21,  is  a 
"  Sketch  of  the  early  History  of  Count  Rumford,  in  which  some  of  the  Mistakes  of 
Cuvier  and  others  of  his  Biographers  are  corrected"}  by  John  Johnston.  Read  before 
the  Natural  History  Society  of  the  Wesleyan  University,  June  30,  1837.  The  writer 
does  correct  some  mistakes,  but  makes  others.  This  article  introduces  a  letter  from 
the  Hon.  Josiah  Pierce,  in  which  he  says,  "My  grandmother  (Rumford's  mother) 
lived  in  my  father's  house  for  seven  years  previous  to  her  death,  which  occurred 
June  n,  1811." 


12  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

too,  that  he  exercised  the  patience  and  sympathy  of  his 
friends  somewhat  severely,  till  the  bent  of  his  genius, 
asserting  and  proving  itself,  offered  a  more  favorable 
interpretation  of  what  had  appeared  in  him  as  fickle- 
ness, inconstancy  of  purpose,  and  even  a  determined 
unwillingness  to  apply  himself  to  any  routine  and  re- 
warding work. 

It  may  be  as  well  to  mention  here  one  of  the  earliest 
and  most  valued  and  steadfast  friends  of  young  Thomp- 
son, his  townsman  and  neighbor,  and  confidential  inti- 
mate in  boyhood,  though  his  senior,  the  sharer  with 
him  in  his  early  scientific  tastes  and  pursuits,  his  sup- 
porter in  the  severe  trouble  which  attended  his  opening 
manhood,  and  his  correspondent  and  agent  while  abroad. 
This  was  the  late  Colonel  Loammi  Baldwin,  of  Woburn, 
a  very  distinguished  officer  in  the  early  part  of  the  Revo- 
lutionary War,  and  afterwards  the  most  eminent  engi- 
neer in  our  country,  whose  enterprise  in  the  Middlesex 
Canal  was  the  great  work  of  its  time.  He  was  born 
January  10,  1744,  nine  years  before  Thompson,  and 
died  October  20,  1807,  nearly  seven  years  before  his 
friend.  It  is  to  his  interest  in  young  Thompson  from 
his  boyhood,  which  led  him  to  preserve  papers  of  that 
period,  as  well  as  those  which  related  to  his  mature 
years,  that  the  biographer  is  very  largely  indebted.  His 
only  surviving  son,  George  Rumford  Baldwin,  Esq., 
also  a  very  eminent  civil  engineer,  has  kindly  allowed 
me  the  free  use  of  these  papers  of  his  father. 

The  paternal  grandfather,  his  maternal  uncle,  Joshua 
Simonds,  the  step-father,  and  the  maternal  grandfather, 
successively  the  responsible  guardians  of  the  child  and 
youth,  had  in  view,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  educate 
and  train  him  for  their  own  respectable  way  of  living, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  13 

leaving  to  his  own  development  and  use  of  opportunities 
the  chance  of  rising,  as  so  many  children  around  him 
and  under  similar  circumstances  with  himself  had  risen, 
to  any  more  conspicuous  position.  The  lands  which 
had  been  allotted  to  his  progenitor,  in  the  first  settle- 
ment of  the  town,  had  of  course  been  divided  from  time 
to  time  in  the  partition  of  his  estate  among  the  steadily 
increasing  number  of  his  descendants.  But  some  of 
them  had  added  to  their  respective  shares,  and  clearing 
and  tillage  had  made  portions  of  the  original  acres  more 
valuable  than  the  whole  had  been.  The  child's  grand- 
father had  died  previously  to  October  16,  1755,  for  the 
agreement  among  his  heirs,  including  that  of  the  guar- 
dians of  a  minor  son  and  of  Benjamin,  the  grandson, 
bears  that  date. 

By  this  instrument,  it  was  provided  that  his  mother, 
Ruth,  should  have  the  improvement  "of  one  half  of  the 
garden  at  the  west  end"  of  the  house  where  her  child 
and  she  had  been  living  with  his  grandparents,  and  "  the 
privilege  of  land  to  raise  beans  for  sauce."  The  guar- 
dian of  her  child's  minor  uncle  was  likewise  to  "give 
the  said  widow  eighty  weight  of  beef,  eight  bushels  of 
rye,  two  bushels  of  malt,  and  two  barrels  of  cider  for 
the  present  year";  while  she  also  had  the  "liberty  of 
gathering  apples  to  bake,  and  three  bushels  of  apples  for 
winter,  yearly  and  every  year."  (See  Appendix.) 

When  the  boy  was  taken  to  his  step-father's,  Mr. 
Pierce,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  time  and  com- 
munity, covenanted  with  the  child's  guardian  for  an 
allowance  of  two  shillings  and  fivepence,  old  tenor,  per 
week,  for  maintenance,  till  his  step-son  should  be  seven 
years  old. 

If  Pictet  and  Cuvier  received  an  impression  from  the 


14  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Count  that  any  wrong  had  been  done  him  in  his  child- 
hood by  his  grandfather's  unequal  distribution  of  his 
estate,  their  informant  failed' to  explain  to  them  the  dif- 
ferent usage  which  prevailed  in  New  England  from  that 
followed  in  Europe  in  the  partition  of  property  on  the 
decease  of  the  head  of  a  family. 

The  Rev.  Samuel  Bewail,  the  faithful  historian  of  the 
town  of  Woburn,  coming  of  a  family  which  has  given 
three  chief-justices  to  Massachusetts,  might  well  be 
supposed  to  hold  the  laws  of  his  native  State  in  reverent 
regard.  His  impartiality,  therefore,  is  to  be  recognized 
in  the  fidelity  with  which  he  represents  the  shortcom- 
ings of  that  town,  in  some  periods  of  its  history,  in 
evading  the  statutes  which  so  carefully  provided  for  the 
interests  of  a  common-school  education  for  all  children. 
But  at  the  time  in  which  Benjamin  Thompson  was  in 
his  early  pupilage,  the  town  was  particularly  favored  in 
having  for  a  village  school-teacher  an  accomplished  and 
faithful  man,  Mr.  John  Fowle,  a  graduate  of  Harvard 
College  in  1747.  It  is  evident  from  the  handwriting 
of  Thompson  when  he  was  only  thirteen  years  of  age, 
from  the  spelling  and  the  almost  faultless  grammatical 
expressions  in  his  letters  and  compositions  before  he 
had  reached  manhood,  and  from  his  skill  in  accounts, 
that  he  had  not  only  had  remarkable  native  powers,  but 
that  he  had  also  been  the  subject  of  careful  and  thorough 
training.  His  chirography  was  clear,  strong,  and  ele- 
gant, and  it  remained  the  same  through  his  life.  Nor 
was  his  style  one  whit  inferior  in  terseness,  exactness, 
and  simplicity  to  that  of  Franklin.  The  high  authority 
of  Mr.  George  B.  Emerson  has  been  given  for  the  asser- 
tion, that,  under  the  mode  of  instruction  through  which 
young  Thompson  and  his  contemporaries  enjoyed  the 


Life  of  Coitnt  Runiford.  15 

opportunities  provided  by  law  in  Massachusetts,  there 
was  afforded  a  better  training,  and  to  better  results,  than 
are  realized  now  from  all  our  elaborate  provisions  for 
public;  education.* 

Thompson,  like  other  youths,  was  entitled  only  to  a 
"  grammar-school  education/*  that  is,  to  be  taught  to 
read,  to  spell,  to  write,  to  construct  sentences  gram- 
matically, and  to  understand  the  rules  of  arithmetic. 
The  range  was  a  narrow  one  compared  with  that  which 
is  professedly  covered  now.  But  the  lessons  that  were 
taught,  and  the  way  of  teaching  them,  were  such  as  to 
quicken 'the  faculties,  and  to  excite,  if  it  was  latent  in 
the  pupil,  a  desire  for  more,  while  affording  him  help 
to  attain  it.  There  was  also  an  able  and  faithful  min- 
ister in  young  Thompson's  parish,  the  Rev.  Josiah 
Sherman,  a  part  of  whose  official  duty  it  was  to  exercise 
a  supervision  over  the  village  school  and  over  fatherless 
children.  There  were  no  manuals  for  English  grammar 
in  those  days,  and  as  a  substitute  was  found  in  a  Latin 
text-book,  a  bright  pupil  incidentally  acquired  "an 
entrance"  into  that  tongue. 

Thompson  indicated  from  his  early  years  an  incon- 
stancy and  indifference  to  the  homely  routine  tasks 
and  the  rural  employments  which  were  required  of  him, 
while,  at  the  same  time,  he  exhibited  an  intense  mental 
activity,  a  spirit  of  ingenuity  and  inventiveness,  and  was 
found  seeking  for  amusement  in  things  which  afterwards 
proved  to  lead  him  to  the  profitable  and  beneficent 
occupations  of  his  mature  life.  He  showed  a  particular 
ardor  for  arithmetic  and  mathematics,  and  it  was  remem- 
bered of  him,  afterwards,  that  his  playtime,  and  some  of 

*  Lecture  in  Historical  Course  before  the  Lowell  Institute,  on  "Education  in  Mas- 
sachusetts:  Early  Legislation  and  History,"  February  16,  1860. 


1 6  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

his  proper  worktime,  had  been  given  to  ingenious  me- 
chanical contrivances,  soon  leading  to  a  curious  interest 
in  the  principles  of  mechanics  and  natural  philosophy. 
His  guardians,  of  course,  undertook,  as  their  respon- 
sibility, to  engage  him  in  the  practical  drudgery  of 
country  life,  that  he  might  be  fitted  for  work  which 
would  promise  direct  results.  So  far  as  they  found  they 
were  likely  to  fail  in  this  purpose,  they  would  regard 
him  as  indolent,  flighty,  and  unpromising. 

He  was  also,  for  a  while,  a  pupil  in  a  school  at  Byfield, 
under  the  charge  of  a  family  connection.  In  1764,  when 
he  was  eleven  years  old,  he  was  for  a  time  put  under  the 
tuition  of  Mr.  Hill,  an  able  teacher  in  Medford,  a  town 
adjoining  Woburn.  Thus  it  would  seem  that  the  youth, 
for  one  born  in  his  sphere  of  life,  was  not  neglected. 
There  is  abundant  evidence,  likewise,  that  many  kind 
friends  were  interested  in  him  before  he  began  to  draw 
others  to  serve  his  aims.  Young  Baldwin  alone  was 
invaluable  to  him. 

It  being  plain  to  his  guardians  that  he  was  either 
too  good  of  too  unpromising  material  out  of  which  to 
make  a  thriving  farmer,  the  alternative  was  to  train  him 
for  a  merchant  or  trader.  To  this  end,  on  October  14, 
1766,  he  was  apprenticed  to  Mr.  John  Appleton  of 
Salem,  an  importer  of  British  goods,  and  a  dealer  in  all 
the  miscellaneous  articles  which  formed  the  stock  of  a 
warehouse  in  so  flourishing  and  rich  a  place  as  that 
town  then  was.  Mr.  Appleton  was  a  man  of  great 
respectability,  and  did  a  large  business.  I  have  before 
me  a  bill  for  goods  bought  from  the  store,  receipted  by 
Thompson  when  he  was  fourteen  years  old,  which,  for 
grace  of  penmanship,  mercantile  style,  and  business-like 
signature,  might  be  regarded  as  proving  that  the  youth 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  17 

had  found  his  proper  position.  He  lived  in  his  master's 
family  as  a  member  of  the  household.  But  there  is 
something  better  than  tradition  to  warrant  the  inference 
that  his  heart  was  not  in  his  employment.  Instead  of 
watching  for  customers  over  the  counter,  he  was  apt  to 
busy  himself  with  tools  and  instruments  which  he  had 
hid  away  under  it.  And,  when  the  sound  would  not 
betray  him,  he  ventured  to  play  his  fiddle,  — for  he  was 
a  skilful  musician,  and  passionately  fond  of  music  of 
every  kind. 

The  following  document,  relating  to  the  apprentice- 
ship of  young  Thompson  with  Mr.  Appleton,  has  a 
claim  to  be  introduced  here  on  that  ground,  if  not,  also, 
as  an  illustration  of  the  exercise  of  the  right  of  private 
judgment  in  the  art  of  spelling  and  in  the  use  of  capital 
letters.* 

"  To  MR.  JOHN  APPLETON  IN  SALAM. 

j» 

"MEDFORD,  June  ye  26:  1767. 

"M?  APPELTON,  Sir,  these  lins  left  us  all  well,  as  I  hope 
they  may  find  you.  Thompson  has  wrote  to  me  diuers  times 
about  his  affairs,  and  he  saith  he  is  Contented,  and  hath  Sum 
priuyledge  of  trade  for  him  Self,  and  that  you,  Sir,  would  let 
him  haue  Sum  fish  to  Ship,  if  I  would  send  you  an  order  for 
them  :  acordingly  I  send  one  inclosed.  Pray  Sir,  if  he  Shipeth 
any  thing,  See  it  insured  in  a  proper  manner.  Sir,  if  Ben  Sends 
to  Sea  and  dont  make  Pay,  let  me  haue  Notis  of  it.  Pray,  Sir, 
tak  Spechal  Care  about  the  Company  he  keeps,  and  I  should  be 
glad  to  know  the  General  Run  of  his  behauour,  both  as  to  trade 
and  Company  :  and  if  you  will  fauour  me  with  an  acount  there 
of,  I  shal  tak  is  as  fauour.  As  to  his  Cloath,  I  Exspect  his 

*  The  original  manuscript  was  communicated  at  a  meeting  of  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society,  in  October,  1864,   by  the  Assistant  Librarian,  the  late  Dr.  John 
Appleton,  to  whose  grandfather  it  was  addressed,  and  is  published  in  the  Proceedings 
of  the  Society  for  that  year,  pp.  4,  5. 
VOL.   II.  2 


1 8  Life  of  Coitnt  Rumford. 

Mother  will  giue  me  and  a  Count  there  of,  Sir,  I  hear  you  Hue 
Shingel  as  yet,  but  dont  Exspect  it  will  be  so  long.  Sir,  Remem- 
ber me  to  Ben1}  and  to  M*  West.  No  more  at  this  time.  So 
I  Remain  yours  to  Serue, 

"JOSHUA  SIMONDS." 

John  Sparhawk  Appleton,  of  Salem,  the  son  of  the 
gentleman  to  whom  the  above  letter  is  addressed,  has 
appended  to  it  the  following:  "Benjamin  Thompson 
(afterwards  Sir  Benjamin,  and  Count  Rumford)  was 
apprenticed  to  John  Appleton,  merchant,  Salem,  Octo- 
ber 14,  1766,  with  whom  he  continued  until  about 
October,  1769,  as  appears  by  some  memoranda  sent 
to  Professor  Levi  Hedge,  Cambridge,  this  25th  March, 
1817." 

In  a  memoir  of  the  late  Francis  Peabody,  President 
of  the  Essex  Institute  in  Salem,  communicated  to 
that  body  by  Hon.  C.  W.  Upham,  a  very  interesting 
reference  is  made  to  the  temporary  residence  of  young 
Thompson  in  that  town.  Mr.  Upham  traces  that  very 
laborious  and  flourishing  institution  back  through  a 
series  of  organizations,  all  having  scientific  and  literary 
objects  in  view,  to  a  social  evening  club,  formed  about 
the  middle  of  the  last  century  to  promote  literature  and 
philosophy.  Beginning  at  that  date,  Salem  and  its* 
neighborhood  was  the  home  of  many  prominent  men, 
distinguished  for  enterprise  in  commerce  and  for  attain- 
ments in  law,  science,  and  manufacturing  skill,  whose 
names  are  now  famous  in  the  history  of  the  past.  Mr. 
Upham  suggests  that  the  lad  of  thirteen  years,  from  the 
farm  in  Woburn,  must  have  found,  from  his  genius 
for  observation  and  the  improvement  of  opportunities, 
some  efficient  impulse  and  help  for  his  future  course 
in  the  place  of  his  service.  His  employer,  though 


Life  of  Co^lnt  Rumford.  19 

keeping  a  retail  variety-store,  after  the  style  of  that  day, 
under  the  same  roof  with  his  dwelling-place,  on  the 
south  side  of  Essex  Street,  was  also  engaged  in  com- 
mercial pursuits.  His  apprentice  had  open  eyes  and 
ears  for  all  that  was  to  be  seen  or  heard,  in  store  or 
house,  from  customers  or  visitors ;  and  his  mechanical 
and  chemical  propensities  were  well  known.  Doubtless 
he  was  employed  by  others  in  the  preparation  of  the 
fireworks,  in  glorification  over  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp 
Act,  in  the  composition  of  which  he  met  with  so  severe 
an  accident.  The  properties  of  gunpowder  were  then, 
as  they  continued  to  be,  a  favorite  matter  for  his  studies 
and  experiments.* 

In  his  confidential  relation  of  the  incidents  of  his 
early  life  to  Monsieur  Pictet,  it  will  be  remembered 
that  the  Count,  as  reported  by  his  friend,  spoke  of  a 
very  respectable  and  enlightened  minister,  "  Mr.  Ber- 
nard," who  gave  him  such  efficient  patronage  and  such 
impulse  in  his  mathematical  studies.  Many  who  have 
followed  with  interest  the  career  of  Thompson,  meeting 
with  this  name  of  Bernard,  copied  from  Pictet's  state- 
ment in  sketches  of  Count  Rumford's  life,  supposing  it 
to  refer  to  the  minister  of  his  native  town,  have  been 
puzzled  in  identifying  him.  The  name,  in  his  case,  as 
in  that  of  one  of  our  royal  Governors,  Sir  Francis  Ber- 
nard, and  of  his  son  Thomas,  a  very  intimate  friend  of 
Rumford's,  in  London,  was  confounded  with  Barnard. 
It  was  in  Salem,  not  in  Woburn,  that  young  Thompson 
found  this  friend.  The  Rev.  Thomas  Barnard  was  the 
minister  of  the  First  Church  in  Salem  from  1755  to 
1776.  His  eldest  son,  Thomas,  after  graduating  from 
Harvard  in  1766,  taught  school  in  Salem,  and  was 

*  Essex  Institute  Historical  Collections.     Second  Series.     Vol.  I.   Part  II.      1869. 


2O  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

ordained  as  minister  of  the  North  Church  there  in 
1773.  Both  of  these  ministers  were  men  of  marked 
ability  and  fine  scholarship,  took  part  in  founding  or 
purchasing,  successively,  the  "  Social  Library,"  the 
"  Kirwan  Library/'  and  the  cc  Philosophical  Library," 
represented  now  by  the  cc  Salem  Athenaeum,"  and  gave 
much  attention  to  scientific  pursuits.  The  Appleton 
family,  and  of  course  young  Thompson  as  a  member  of 
it,  worshipped  with  the  congregation  of  the  elder  Bar- 
nard. The  son  coming  to  teach  in  Salem  in  the  same 
year  in  which  Thompson  began  his  apprenticeship  there, 
and  having  a  younger  brother  who  was  one  of  Thomp- 
son's "companions,"  we  find  in  the  facts  a  full  expla- 
nation of  the  assertion  of  M.  Pictet.  Thompson  was 
a  handsome  and  engaging  youth,  of  evidently  bright 
faculties.  The  interest  of  his  minister  was  thus  drawn 
to  him,  and  he  probably  received  the  aid  and  encourage- 
ment of  the  new  teacher.  It  was  thus  that  he  was 
"  taught  algebra,  geometry,  astronomy,  and  even  the 
higher  mathematics,"  so  that  before  the  age  of  fifteen 
he  was  able  to  calculate  an  eclipse. 

The  subjoined  letter,  from  the  boy  to  his  friend  in 
Woburn,  contains  one  word  of  faulty  grammar,  which, 
as  unusual  with  him,  is  to  be  accounted  as  a  slip  of  the 
pen  :  — 

"SALEM,  Nov.  12,  1768. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  did  not  go  to  Mr.  Derby's  after  them  Pis 
tols  till  yesterday,  but  he  had  not  got  them,  having  sent  them 
home  some  time  before  (for  they  were  not  his).  But  he  told  me 
another  man  had  got  them  who  lived  up  in  Danvers  about  a 
mile.  Upon  this  I  rode  up  to  this  man,  but  he  had  sent  them 
home  to  the  owner,  about  two  or  three  days  before,  who  lives  at 
Beverly.  This  man  saith  that  the  price  is  four  dollars.  The 
Barrels  are  very  good,  the  locks  but  ordinary.  If  you  conclude 


BOOK-PLATE    ENGRAVED    BY  BENJAMIN    THOMPSON    ABOUT  1768 

{  PAOE   21.) 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  2 1 

to  take  them,  I  can  get  them  at  that  price,  but  I  don't  think 
much  under. 

Votre  tres  humble  Serviteur,  Monsieur, 

BN    THOMPSON. 
To  MR.  LOAMMI  BALDWIN,  Woburn. 

We  must  regard  the  perseverance  of  the  youth  in 
going,  in  his  spare  time,  in  so  many  directions,  to  hunt 
up  "  them  Pistols,"  as  an  offset  to  the  inelegance  in 
describing  them. 

His  skill  and  ingenuity,  which  are  said  to  have  been 
remarkable  in  this  exercise  of  them,  were  constantly  put 
to  use  by  the  boys  of  his  acquaintance,  in  engraving 
upon  the  handles  of  their  knives  and  other  implements 
the  names  and  certain  devices  of  their  owners.  Doubt- 
less, also,  his  facility  in  this  work  was  improved  by 
elder  persons  in  marking  silver.  Indeed,  he  was  an 
able  and  accurate  draughtsman,  and  an  accomplished 
designer.  I  have  before  me  a  copy  of  an  engraved 
plate,  wrought  by  him  when  in  Salem,  three  inches  and 
five  eighths  long  by  two  inches  and  seven  eighths  broad. 
From  the  lopped  bough  on  one  side  of  an  old  and  top- 
less tree  is  suspended  a  shield,  and  from  a  green  shoot 
on  the  other  side  a  square  and  compass.  The  shield, 
inscribed  "  B.  Thompson,"  is  beautifully  proportioned, 
and  traced  with  all  the  heraldic  accompaniments.  On 
the  upper  right-hand  corner  an  open  eye  is  looking 
from  a  quarter  of  a  radiated  sun,  below  which  is  a  ship 
in  full  sail.  Beneath  the  shield  is  a  young  lion  couched, 
an  open  and  a  closed  book,  a  sword,  and  another  com- 
pass. This  work  seems  to  have  been  intended  for  a 
book-plate. 

Like  other  geniuses  in  mechanical  inventions,  ex- 
cepting only  that,  being  brighter  than  many  of  them, 


22  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Thompson's  delusions  came  in  early  youth  and  were 
sooner  outgrown  in  manhood,  he  experimented  upon 
the  desideratum  of  a  machine  which  should  realize 
"  perpetual  motion."  He  even  thought  he  had  been 
successful  in  contriving  one.  He  had  the  privilege  of 
making  occasional  visits  to  his  family  in  Woburn,  gen- 
erally of  brief  duration,  and  his  conveyance  was  neces- 
sarily upon  his  own  feet,  and  the  time  taken  was  not  to 
interfere  with  his  duties  to  his  employer.  His  friend 
Baldwin  records*  that  Thompson  walked  one  night 
from  Salem  to  Woburn,  in  order  to  show  him  parts  of 
this  wonderful  instrument  of  wheels,  and  to  explain  its 
mechanical  powers.  The  friend,  however,  adds  that  he 
"  was  never  able  to  gain  any  information  concerning  the 
principles  upon  which  it  was  expected  to  act." 

Though  the  young  apprentice  was  well  understood  in 
Salem  to  be  a  dabbler  in  a  great  many  pursuits  and 
occupations,  with  tools  and  experiments  and  mechanics 
and  chemistry,  which  did  not  appertain  to  his  calling 
with  his  employer,  it  does  not  appear  that  he  failed  of 
rendering  him  due  service.  He  undoubtedly  had  an 
aversion  to  the  business,  while  compelled  by  supposed 
necessity  to  commit  himself  to  it.  His  apprenticeship 
covered  a  period  of  intense  popular  excitement  over  the 
preliminary  events  leading  to  the  Revolutionary  War. 
The  youth  must  have  heard  the  heated  discussions  of 
the  time,  and  been  more  or  less  initiated  understand- 
ingly  into  the  merits  of  the  issue  which  was  soon  to 
open,  disastrously  as  it  at  first  seemed  to  bear  on  his 
own  personal  experience.  His  employer  was  among  the 
signers  of  the  non-importation  agreement,  by  which  the 
mercantile  and  trading  class  in  the  Province  sought  to 

*  In  the  "Literary  Miscellany,"  Cambridge.     Vol.  I.  pp.  352-361. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  t  23 

express  their  resentment,  in  conformity  with  the  popular 
feeling  against  the  oppressive  measures  of  the  British 
Ministry.  This  agreement,  which  the  watchful  patriots 
took  care  should  be  strictly  kept  even  by  those  who 
might  have  reluctantly  entered  into  it,  of  course  so 
affected  the  business  of  Mr.  Appleton  as  to  make  the 
services  of  Thompson  less  necessary  to  him.  In  the 
mean  while  the  boy,  more  engaged,  we  must  venture  to 
say,  in  his  scientific  experimenting  than  in  the  cause  of 
demonstrative  patriotism,  came  very  near  to  losing  his 
eyesight,  if  not  also  his  life,  by  an  alarming  accident. 
He  had  undertaken  to  prepare  some  fireworks  for  use 
in  a  public  jubilation  over  the  news  of  the  repeal  of  the 
Stamp  Act.  While  grinding  his  materials  in  a  mortar, 
a  terrific  explosion,  probably  caused  by  some  grains  of 
sand  in  the  compound,  involved  his  head,  hands,  and 
breast  in  its  fearful  consequences.  He  suffered  a  long 
confinement  and  much  pain,  and  was  regarded  as  very 
fortunate  in  escaping  permanent  injury. 

The  following  correspondence  shows  that  young 
Thompson  was  at  home,  probably  in  a  state  of  con- 
valescence, at  the  time  of  its  date :  — 

"  WOBURN,  Allgt.   14,    1769 

"  MR.  LOAMMI  BALDWIN, 

"  SIR,  —  Please  to  give  the  Direction  of  the  Rays  of  Light 
from  a  Luminous  Body  to  an  Opake,  and  the  Reflection  from 
the  Opake  Body  to  another  equally  Dense  and  Opake ;  viz1,  the 
Direction  of  the  Rays  of  the  Luminous  Body  to  that  of  the 
Opake,  and  the  direction  of  rays  by  reflection  to  the  other  opake 
Body.  Your,  &c. 

"BENJ*  THOMPSON. 

"  N.  B.  From  the  Sun  to  the  Earth,  Reflected  to  the  Moon 
at  an  angle  of  40  Degrees." 


24  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  WOBURN,  Augt    1 6,    1769. 

"  MR.  BENJ.  THOMPSON, 

"  SIR,  —  It  is  almost  impossible  to  describe  the"  directions  the 
rays  pass.  Suppose  one  was  at  the  Equinoctial  Line,  at  twelve 
o'clock.  At  that  place  then  I  imagine  that  the  rays  of  the  Sun 
would  pass  directly  straight  to  the  eye  of  the  beholder.  But 
suppose  the  Sun  to  be  just  arising,  then  I  imagine  that  the  rays 
would  pass  in  a  curve  line,  and  so  grow  straighter  as  it  rises 
higher  in  the  horizon.  The  reason  is,  I  conjecture,  owing  to 
the  Vapours  that  ascend  out  of  the  earth.  I  would  prove  it  thus. 
Take  a  bowl  and  put  a  dollar  in  it,  and  then  carefully  filling  it 
with  fair  water,  till  it  seems  to  be  heaped  as  it  will  do  if  the 
brim  was  dry,  and  go  off  to  a  distance  that  brings  your  eye  level 
with  the  top  of  the  bowl,  and  you  can  see  the  dollar  in  the 
bottom  of  the  bowl ;  and  that  air  nigh  the  ground  is  something 
of  the  same  nature  is  the  opinion  of 

"  Your  Humble  Servant, 

"LOAMMI  BALDWIN." 


"WOBURN,  August  1 6th,  1769. 

"  MR.  LOAMMI  BALDWIN, 

"  SIR,  —  Please  to  inform  me  in  what  manner  fire  operates 
upon  Clay,  to  change  the  Colour,  from  the  Natural  Colour  to 
red,  and  from  red  to  black,  &c.  ;  and  how  it  operates  upon 
Silver,  to  change  it  to  Blue. 

"  I  am  your  most  Humble,  and  Obedient  Servant, 

"BENJf  THOMPSON. 
"  God  save  the  King." 


"  WOBURN,  Aug*  1769. 

"  MR.  LOAMMI  BALDWIN 

"  SIR,  —  Please  to  give  the  Nature,  Essence,  Beginning  of 
Existence,  and  Rise  of  the  Wind  in  General,  with  the  whole 
Theory  thereof,  so  as  to  be  able  to  answer  all  Questions  relative 
thereto. 

"  Yours, 

"BENJ.  THOMPSON." 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  25 

The  following  is  written  on  the  back  of  the  above :  — 

"  WOBURN,  Augt  1 5th,  1769. 

"  SIR,  —  There  was  but  few  beings  (for  Inhabitants  of  this 
world)  created  before  the  airy  Element  was  :  so  it  has  not  been 
transmitted  down  to  us  how  the  Great  Creator  formed  the 
matter  thereof.  So  I  shall  leave  it  till  I  am  asked  only  the 
Natural  cause,  and  why  it  blows  so  many  ways  in  so  short  a 
time  as  it  does." 

In  the  autumn  of  1769,  Thompson  was  sent  to  Bos- 
ton, to  engage  in  a  business  similar  to  that  which  he 
had  been  learning  at  Salem.  He  was  put  as  an  appren- 
tice clerk  with  Mr.  Hopestill  Capen,  a  dry-goods  dealer. 
Here  he  had  as  a  fellow-apprentice  the  late  Samuel  Park- 
man,  who  became,  after  the  Revolutionary  War,  one  of 
the  largest  and  richest  merchants  of  Boston.  Thomp- 
son records  the  beginning  of  his  attendance  on  a  French 
school,  held  in  the  evening,  on  October  27,  1769.  He 
remained  in  this  situation  till  the  spring  of  the  following 
year,  and  would  appear  then  to  have  left  it  from  the 
falling  off  in  the  business  of  his  employer,  who  had  also 
entered  into  the  non-importation  agreement. 

I  have  seen  it  stated  as  a  matter  of  fact  by  one  of 
Count  Rumford's  biographers,  in  a  sketch  already  re- 
ferred to,*  that  young  Thompson,  while  in  the  employ 
of  Mr.  Capen,  was  present  on  the  5th  of  March,  1770, 
on  the  occasion  known  to  fame  and  popular  oratory  as 
"  the  Boston  Massacre  "  ;  when  the  hated  soldiery,  repre- 
senting, in  our  capital,  the  cause  of  tyranny,  goaded  by 
the  jeers  and  insults  of  a  street  crowd  of  boys  and  men, 
fired  into  it  and  killed  four  victims.  It  is  said  that 
Thompson  "was  there  found,  sword  in  hand,  among 
the  most  eager  to  attack  those  whom  he  considered  the 

*  American  Journal  of  Science.     Vol.  XXXIII.  p.  24. 


26  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

enemies  of  his  country."  There  may  be  tradition  to 
authenticate  this  statement,  which  came  as  from  a  trust- 
worthy source  to  the  writer  of  it.  But  I  know  of  no 
documentary  attestation  of  it. 

Fortunately  there  is  preserved  a  very  interesting  and 
suggestive  relic,  which  Mr.  Thompson  left  behind  him 
in  his  abrupt  departure  from  his  home,  for  reasons  soon 
to  be  stated,  and  which  is  very  significant  of  the  tastes 
and  occupations  of  his  youth.  It  is  a  memorandum- 
book  of  substantial  linen  paper,  with  parchment  cover 
and  a  brass  clasp,  some  leaves  of  which  have  been  cut 
out,  thirty-six  of  those  it  may  have  originally  contained 
being  still  left.  This  memento  is  now  before  me ;  and 
the  fragmentary  information  and  the  curious  matter  of 
its  contents  may  be  turned  to  a  profitable  account.  * 

The  contents  of  the  book  are,  as  will  be  seen,  very 
miscellaneous,  giving  tokens  of  the  bent  of  genius  of 
the  youth,  with  anticipatory  hints  of  the  characteristics 
and  occupations  of  his  mature  life.  The  boy  in  this 
case  was  certainly  father  of  the  man.  About  fifty  of 
the  seventy-two  remaining  pages  have  upon  them  some 
sketch  or  record ;  the  others,  unfortunately,  being  blank. 
Twenty  of  the  pages  at  the  beginning  and  the  end 
of  the  book  contain  a  most  extraordinary  variety  of 
sketches  and  etchings  with  pen  and  pencil,  some  of 
them  being  colored  by  paints.  A  portion  of  these  are 
but  rude  and  of  faint  outlines ;  but  others  of  them  give 
evidence  of  a  skilful  and  accurate  draughtsman,  with  an 
eye  for  proportions,  with  correct  perspective  and  a  cun- 
ning hand.  There  are  caricature  sketches  of  human 
physiognomy  and  forms,  —  men  and  women,  young  and 

*  The  book  belongs  to  Joseph  B.  Walker,  Esq.,  of  Concord,  N.  H.,  a  descendant 
of  the  father  of  Count  Rumford's  first  wife.  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Walker's  courtesy 
for  the  privilege  of  using  the  book,  as  for  other  valued  favors. 


Life  of  Coitnt  Rumford. 


27 


old,  grave  and  gay  ;  a  full  figure,  with  laughing  coun- 
tenance, strongly  marked,  and  outstretched  arm,  entitled 
"  My  Dear  Democritus  "  ;  the  figure  of  a  wigged  and 
spectacled  preacher,  which,  it  is  to  be  feared,  represents, 
not  reverently,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Sherman  of  Woburn,  in 
whose  meeting-house,  it  will  appear,  he  paid  the  hire  of 
a  seat ;  an  old-fashioned  gentleman  in  grotesque  courtly 
costume,  with  cane,  tie  wig,  and  plumed  hat,  entitled 
"  Harry  Modiste,"  pointed  at  frcm  behind  by  a  railing 
jester,  asking,  "  Ha !  you  red  nose,  how  will  you  sell 
your  wig?  by  the  Cord  ?  "  — a  winged  cherub;  a  female 
form  with  an  ass's  head,  holding  an  open  hymn-book, 
singing;  a  swordsman,  and  two  fencers  in  attitude. 
There  is  a  sketch  of  an  old-fashioned  corner  dwelling- 
house,  with  a  shop  under  it,  which  may  be  that  of 
Mr.  Appleton  in  Salem,  or  of  Mr.  Capen  in  Boston. 
There  is  an  etching  of  a  group,  called  "  A  Council  of 
State,"  including  a  jackass  and  twelve  human  heads, 


28  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

with  a  variety  of  most  expressive  caricature  features. 
In  this  sketch  the  roguish  artist  seems  to  have  antici- 
pated an  innovation  of  our  own  times,  as  he  has  intro- 
duced both  a  young  and  an  old  woman  into  this  Coun- 
cil, with  two  other  faces  that  may  belong  to  either  sex. 
There  is  an  admirably  drawn  psalm-book,  open  and 
showing  the  notes  of  a  tune,  and  a  well-shaded  scroll. 
There  are  boats  and  ships,  a  table  with  bottles  and 
glasses,  pistols,  Indian  tomahawks,  and  human  bones. 
Here  is  indeed  a  boyish  medley,  but  indicating  a 
wonderful  versatility. 

The  earliest  entry  of  a  more  serious  character  is 
without  date,  and  contains  a  recipe  for  making  rock- 
ets, &c.,  giving  the  proportions  of  powder,  sulphur, 
saltpetre,  and  charcoal  for  rockets  of  different  .sizes, 
with  the  following  directions,  accompanied  by  ink- 
drawn  sketches  :  — 

u  The  Composition  for  middle-size  Rockets,  may  serve  for 
Serpents  and  for  Raining  Fire.  Composition  for  Stars  —  4  oz. 
Saltpetre,  2  oz.  Brimstone,  2  oz.  Powder,  ground  fine  and  made 
into  a  paste,  and  rolled  into  little  balls,  and  then  on  dry  gun- 
powder dust,  then  dry  them.  The  Tail  of  the  Rocket  should  be 
seven  times  as  long  as  the  Rocket  itself. 

"  A  Compound  Rocket  has  a  head  filled  with  Serpents, 
Crackers,  Stars,  &c.,  or  fire-balls,  or  any  combustibles,  having 
a  piece  of  leather  covered  over  the  top  of  the  Rocket,  with 
small  holes  burnt  through  the  middle  of  it,  to  let  the  fire 
through  to  the  Crackers,  &c.,  having  some  dry  ground  powder 
in  the  head. 

"  A  double  Rocket  is  one  placed  above  another,  with  goose 
quill  placed  from  the  lower  to  the  bottom  of  the  upper  one. 

"To  make  a  Report:  When  you  have  filled  the  Rocket 
within  about  two  inches  of  the  top,  thrust  down  a  piece  of 
leather  about  the  bigness  of  the  hole  of  the  Rocket,  and  punch 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  29 

it  full  of  holes  in  the  middle  with  a  bodkin,  then  strew  a  little 
dust  of  powder  ground  fine,  and  fill  the  rest  up  with  unground 
powder,  and  stop  up  the  remaining  part  with  leather  or  paper, 
and  stop  it  up." 

The  recipe  closes  with  the  somewhat  irrelevant  reflec- 
tion: "  Love  is  a  Noble  Passion  of  the  Mind.  LOVE." 

The  first  entry  in  the  book  that  bears  a  date  is  as 
follows:  "  Boston,  October  27th,  1769.  This  evening 
entered  French  School  to  Learn  the  French  Language,  at 
six  pounds,  fifteen  shillings,  Old  Tenor,  per  Quarter 
Anni,  to  go  every  evening  except  Sunday;  deducting  the 
time  I  am  absent."  This  is  followed  by  a  table  of  dates 
reaching  through  November,  and  showing  ten  occasions 
of  absence  to  eighteen  of  attendance.  Thompson  was 
then  in  his  seventeenth  year,  and  an  apprentice  to 
Hopestill  Capen  in  the  dry-goods  trade  in  Boston. 
He  records  the  purchase,  on  December  21,  1769,  of 
two  and  a  half  yards  of  black  cloth,  and  his  indebtedness 
to  Hiram  Thompson,  his  uncle,  for  rent  of  a  part  of  a 
pew  from  August  i,  1770.  He  had  a  settlement  with 
this  kinsman  on  November  11,  1771,  offsetting  pew- 
rent  and  the  use  of  a  horse  to  Reading  and  Boston  by 
charges  against  Hiram  for  cutting  and  carting  fire-wood. 
He  had  similar  transactions  in  fuel  with  his  step-father, 
Josiah  Pierce,  and  with  James  Snow.  His  loads  were 
generally  small  ones,  seldom  more  than  half  a  cord  each, 
showing  that  while  he  needed  thus  to  earn  money,  he 
did  not  like  any  long  job  of  the  kind.  He  received 
a  pound,  old  tenor,  per  cord.  On  April  6,  1771,  he 
made  a  contract  with  Abraham  Alexander  to  cut  and  cord 
for  him  seven  or  eight  cords  at  nine  shillings  per  cord. 

These  economical  entries  are  very  pleasantly  diversified 
by  the  following  "  Directions  for  the  Back  Sword  "  :  — - 


30  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  I.  To  put  yourself  in  a  proper  posture  of  Defence,  viz* 
hold  your  Sword  firm  in  your  Right  hand,  with  your  point 
elevated  as  high  as  your  Antagonist's  head,  and  your  hilt  a 
little  depressed,  bringing  your  sword  to  range  with  your  Antago- 
nist's body  and  with  his  eyes:  then  step  forward  with  your 
right  foot  about  a  foot,  forming  a  square  with  your  two  feet : 
then  stand  upright  and  take  your  distance,  just  so  as  to  touch 
your  Antagonist's  breast :  then  bend  your  left  knee,  which  will 
bring  your  body  in  a  proper  Posture  of  Defence."  (From  Mr. 
McAlpine). 

This  is  illustrated  by  a  sketch  in  ink  of  two  fashion- 
able combatants  engaged  in  the  exercise. 


The  following  entry  carries  much  interest  with  it :  — 

An  Account  of  what  Expence  I  have  been  at  towards  getting  an 
Electrical  Machine. 

£      s.      d. 

1771.     July.  —  J  pd.  brass  wyer  050 

I  yd.  iron  wyer  i      3 

i  pd.  7  oz.  Pewter  to  make  bullets,  &c. 

pd.  Cowdry  for  3  bells  i      10  o 

Aug8t      To  Baldwin's  Horse  to  Reading, 

"    1 2  To  Cash  paid  for  old  Brass,  °     9     3 

To  i  Book  Brass  Leaf  026 

"    1 6  To  Cash  paid  for  i  yd  Brass  wyer  026 

do        I  book  Leaf  Brass  026 

do       2  Oil  Bottles  °     5     3 

do       £  pd.  Copper  Fileings  026 

do       £  oz.  Silver  Brons  090 

do       i     oz.  Shell  Lac  076 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  31 

£      s.      d. 

1771.    Aug5*  1 6  To  Cash  £  gill  Laquer  050 

do        i  Varnishing  Brush  030 

do       3  oz?    Aqua  Fortis  076 

To  2  phials,  i  for  Laquer,  the  other  for 

Aqua  Fortis  026 

"    23  Paid  for  Mr.  R.  Baldwin's  horse  to  go  to 

Cowdry  for  Brass  Work  046 

To  Stuff  to  make  a  Wheel, 

p<?  LOAMMI  BALDWIN." 

Young  Thompson  at  this  time  began  the  study  of 
medicine  with  Dr.  Hay. 

A  debit  and  credit  account  is  then  opened  with  Dr. 
John  Hay,  of  Woburn,  beginning  in  February,  1771. 
Young  Thompson  credits  the  Doctor  for  a  pair  of 
leather  gloves,  for  Mrs.  Hay's  knitting  him  a  pair  of 
stockings,  for  a  small  quantity  of  gum  benzoine,  and 
"By  my  Board,  from  Dec1:  ifth,  1770,^0  June 
1 5th,  1772,  at  40  Shillings,  Old  Tenor,  per  Week, 
being  78  Weeks,  —  £156  o.  o."  This  indebtedness 
of  the  young  medical  pupil  is  offset  to  the  amount  of 
<£io8  by  as  promiscuous  and  miscellaneous  a  list  of 
materials  in  payment  as  ever  found  entry  on  the  ledger 
of  a  country  variety-store,  or  in  barter  traffic.  Small 
sums  of  cash,  in  eight  payments,  not  amounting  in  the 
aggregate  to  two  pounds,  are  interspersed  with  con- 
siderations of  this  sort,  leading  us  to  marvel  over  the 
ingenuity  of  young  Thompson  in  gathering  resources : 

"To  Ivory  for  Smoke  Machine:  parcels  of  Butter,  Coffee, 
Sugar  and  Tea  ;  parcels  of  various  drugs,  camphor,  contryerva, 
gum  benzoine,  arsenic,  calomel  and  rhubarb :  one  half  a  white 
sheep  skin  :  leather :  brass  wire  :  white  oak  timber :  to  sundry 
lots  of  wood  ;  to  other  lots  '  delivered  while  I  was  at  Wilming- 
ton, and  left  by  me  when  I  was  at  Wilmington  the  last  time ' : 
4  to  a  Blue  Huzza  Cloak  bought  of  Zebediah  Wyman,  and  paid 


32  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

for  by  fifteen  and  a  half  cords  of  wood' :  a  pair  of  knee  buckles  : 
a  Chirurgical  Knife  :  c  to  a  Cittern  (a  Musical  Instrument),' 
and  '  to  the  Time  I  have  been  absent  from  your  house,  nineteen 
weeks  at  Forty  Shillings  :  and  to  the  time  my  Mother  washed 
forme.'" 

Two  periods  of  absence  were  doubtless  those  in  which 
the  youth  was  replenishing  his  funds  by  keeping  school 
at  Wilmington  and  Bradford,  as  appears  by  the  fol- 
lowing entry  on  another  page. 

"  Time  of  my  Absence  from  Board  at  Dr.  Hays. 
"  From  June  the  I2th,  1771  To whilest  I  was  at  Cam- 
bridge attending  Mr.  Winthrop's  Lectures.  From  DecC  the  Qth, 
1771,  to  Feby  the  5th,  1772,  keeping  School  at  Wilmington. 
From  March  the  — ,  1772,  to  April  — ,  J7?2,  six  weeks  and 
three  days,  keeping  School.  On  a  Journey  to  Pepperell,  three 
days.  On  a  Journey  to  Bradford,  June  the  2d,  1772,  absent  from 
Monday  morning,  before  Breakfast,  to  Friday  Night  after  Supper." 

These  entries  indicate  the  frugality  and  the  rigid  con- 
ditions of  scrupulous  economy  and  careful  calculation 
by  which  the  youth  in  the  period  of  his  pupilage  was 
compelled  to  adjust  his  expenses  to  his  means,  while  he 
was  dependent  upon  his  own  earnings. 

Another  entry,  without  date,  acquaints  us  with  the 
exertion  and  effort  on  his  own  part,  added  to  the  outlay 
for  materials  above  transcribed,  which  he  devoted  to  the 
construction  of  his  electrical  machine. 

"  An  Account  of  what  Work  I  have  done  towards  Getting  an 

Electrical  Machine. 

"  Two  or  three  days  work  making  Wheele. 
"  One  half  days  work  making  pattern  for  Small  Conductor, 
"  Making  pattern  for  Electrometer. 

"  One  half  day  and  a  horse  from  hence  to  B.  Tays,  then  to 
W.  Youngs,  from  thence  to  Ich*  Richardsons,  to  try  to  get 
Machine  made. 


Life  of  Count  Ritmford.  33 

"  Four  Journeys  down  to  Ich*  Richardsons  Shop. 

a  Three  Journeys  to  Cowdreys. 

"One  Journey  to  Boston,  Aug5.'   i6th,  as  I  think." 

A  heading  is  made  over  a  column  for  the  entry  of  the 
pecuniary  estimate  of  these  specifications,  but  no  sums 
are  set  down.  It  would  have  interested  us  to  be  told 
what  valuation  he  fixed  for  a  day  of  his  own  time. 

But  young  Thompson  was  at  this  time  a  student  of 
medicine  and  anatomy.  The  article  devoted  to  him  as 
Count  Rum  ford,  in  the  Nouvelle  Biographic  Generale, 
very  properly  describes  him  before  he  left  this  country 
as  "  Chimiste  et  Physicien  [Physicist]  Americain."  The 
memorandum-book  has  its  full  share  of  entries  recogniz- 
ing his  interest  and  his  devotion  to  the  professional  stud- 
ies for  which  he  was  making  his  home  with  Dr.  Hay. 
Besides  a  few  entries  in  cipher  which  may  be  regarded 
as  containing  professional  secrets,  there  are  medical 
recipes,  in  the  approved  cabalistic  style,  for  the  com- 
position of  doses,  pills,  and  clysters.  The  ingredients 
of  a  special  preparation  are  set  down  as  "  for  Phillis 
Walker,"  in  which  assafoetida  enters  alike  at  the  begin- 
ning and  at  the  end.  As  these  recipes  have  doubtless 
been  very  much  improved  upon,  it  is  hardly  advisable 
to  copy  them  here.  The  pupil's  interest  and  skill  in 
anatomy  are  attested  by  an  all  too  faithful  drawing  of 
'the  body  of  a  malformed  and  monstrous  infant,  with 
a  whole  page  of  minute  description  "of  the  following 
Cut,"  dated  April  i6th,  1771,  — "a  Club-foot,"  "a 
Compleat  hare-lip,"  and  "  toes  growing  in  pairs,"  being 
the  least  revolting  among  the  aberrations  noted. 

An  undated  entry  gives  the  following  arrangement  for 
the  disposal  of  his  time  during  each  period  of  twenty- 
four  hours.     Beginning  at  eleven  o'clock  at  night,  — 
3 


34  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

u  From  eleven  to  six,  Sleep.  Get  up  at  Six  o'clock  and  wash 
my  hands  and  face.  From  Six  to  eight,  exercise  one  half  and 
study  one  half.  From  eight  till  ten,  Breakfast,  Attend  Prayers, 
&c.  From  ten  to  twelve,  Study  all  the  time.  From  twelve 
to  one,  Dine,  &c.  From  one  to  four,  study  constantly.  From 
four  to  five,  Relieve  my  mind  by  some  Diversion  or  Exercise. 
From  five  till  Bedtime,  follow  what  my  inclination  leads  me 
to  ;  whether  it  be  to  go  abroad,  or  stay  at  home  and  read  either 
Anatomy,  Physic,  or  Chemistry,  or  any  other  book  I  want  to 
Peruse." 

This  is  followed  by  the  ensuing  account  of  his  occu- 
pations on  each  week-day  for  two  weeks. 

"  Monday  and  Tuesday,  Anatomy.  Wednesday,  Institutes 
of  Physic.  Thursday,  Surgery.  Friday,  Chemistry,  with  the 
Materia  Medica.  Saturday,  Physic  one  half,  and  Surgery  one 
half. 

"  Monday,  Anatomy.  Tuesday,  Anatomy  one  half,  and 
Surgery  one  half.  Wednesday,  Surgery.  Thursday,  Institutes 
of  Physic.  Friday,  Physic.  Saturday,  Chemistry  with  the 
Materia  Medica." 

When  any  man,  young  or  old,  thus  methodically  dis- 
poses the  days  of  the  week  and  the  hours  of  each  day 
with  reference  to  systematic  study  and  culture  in  pur- 
suing various  branches  of  knowledge,  not  neglectful  of 
the  laws  of  health  and  the  necessity  of  relaxation,  we 
may  be  sure  that  he  will  make,  if  he  be  not  already,  a 
true  philosopher.  The  fact,  also,  that  Thompson  had 
to  teach  while  he  was  himself  learning,  would  make  it 
certain  that  he  would  do  both  to  better  purpose.  In 
boarding  around  for  short  periods  with  successive  fami- 
lies in  many  country  towns,  —  the  fashion  for  the  dis- 
trict schoolmaster  of  those  times,  —  he  largely  increased 
his  knowledge  of  men  and  things. 

The   Hon.  C.  W.   Upham,   of  Salem,   informs  me, 


Life  of  Co^mt  Rumford.  35 

that  when  in  1818-19,  as  a  c°^ege  student,  he  taught 
school  in  a  district  of  Wilmington,  following  Thomp- 
son at  a  distance  of  forty-seven  or  forty-eight  years, 
the  oldest  people  there  very  well  remembered  their 
distinguished  and  eccentric  master  of  the  former  age. 
Strange  stories  were  told  of  certain  athletic  and  gymnastic 
performances  and  feats,  not  to  say  tricks,  in  which  he 
sometimes  exercised  himself  and  his  scholars,  within  the 
walls  as  well  as  outside.  In  the  winter  of  1770,  Thomp- 
son was  confined  five  weeks  with  a  fever. 

Going  back  a  little  from  some  of  the  later  contents 
of  these  memoranda,  particular  reference  must  be  made 
to  the  envied  privilege  which  young  Thompson  enjoyed 
in  attending  some  of  the  scientific  lectures  at  Harvard 
College.  He  refers  to  his  temporary  absence  from  Dr. 
Hay's  as  beginning  June  12,  1771,  on  occasion  of 
such  attendance,  and  he  seems  to  imply  that  he  lived, 
during  the  interval,  at  Cambridge.  He  may  have  found 
lodging  and  board  there  for  a  short  time.  But  it  has 
always  been  affirmed  that  so  ardent  was  his  desire  thus 
to  gratify  his  scientific  passion,  that,  while  compelled  to 
make  his  visits  to  Cambridge  consistent  with  duties  in 
Woburn,  he  walked,  with  his  friend  Baldwin,  over  the 
distance,  some  eight  miles  or  more.  Some  time  be- 
fore this,  Mr.  Baldwin,  not  being  a  student  at  the 
College,  had  sought,  and  through  the  interest  of  a 
friend  in  Boston  had  obtained,  the  privilege  of  attend- 
ing upon  Professor  Winthrop's  lectures  there.  He 
secured  the  same  privilege  for  his  younger  friend.  We 
may  be  sure  that  among  those  whose  names  were  on  the 
class-lists  there  were  none  who  more  valued  this  rich 
opportunity,  or  turned  it  to  better  account,  than  these 


3  6  Life  of  Co^lnt  Ritmford. 

volunteers.  It  was  in  summer  weather,  and  the  walk, 
if  a  long  one,  was  agreeable,  —  by  shady  roads  and  green 
fields,  and  easy  hills  and  pleasant  ponds.  When  the 
friends  returned  home,  they  were  in  the  habit  of  repeat- 
ing the  experiments  which  they  had  witnessed,  and  of 
trying  others,  with  rude  apparatus  of  their  own  con- 
trivance. It  was  as  a  grateful  return  for  the  favors 
he  had  thus  enjoyed  at  the  College  that  Count  Rum-- 
ford gave  to  it  the  endowment  which  founded  the  Pro- 
fessorship that  bears  his  name,  to  be  fitly  mentioned  in 
its  proper  place. 

Pictet  must  have  again  misapprehended  his  friend  as 
mentioning  "  Dr.  Williams "  as  preceding  Professor 
Winthrop  at  Cambridge.  Thompson  could  not  have 
heard  the  former  as  a  lecturer  in  the  College.  The 
Rev.  Samuel  Williams,  to  whom  probably  the  reference 
is  made,  succeeded  Winthrop  in  the  Professorship  in 
1780,  when  Thompson  was  not  in  the  country.  He 
was  called  to  that  position  from  the  pastorship  of  the 
Church  in  Bradford.  As  Thompson  had  taught  school 
in  that  town,  he  may  have  there  received  instruction 
from  the  scientific  minister. 

The  following  letter  must  interpret  itself  to  the 
reader.  I  can  throw  no  light  upon  the  occasion 
of  it. 

"  WOBURN,  May  4,  .1770. 

"  SIR,  —  I  just  received  your  letter  dated  this  day,  the  sequel 
of  which  signifies  your  uneasiness  with  my  conduct  together 
with  a  number  of  other  persons  concerned  with  me  in  rehears- 
ing part  of  a  play.  I  am  not  sensible  we  have  transgressed  the 
laws  of  this  Province.  I  have  heard  an  argument  related  for 
and  against  the  thing  by  persons  well  acquainted  with  Law  :  the 
person  for  it  (as  I  was  informed)  brought  his  antagonist  to 
acknowledge  that  there  was  such  a  hole  in  that  law,  that  any 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  37 

moderate  performer  of  plays  might  easily  creep  through,  and 
that  it  is  only  meant  (he  supposed)  to  prevent  extravagances, 
such  as  public  Theatres  erected,  stage-players  and  actors  main- 
tained, and  frequent  performances  of  plays,  and  the  like.  How 
far  he  was  right  I  can't  say.  For  my  share,  I  was  not  con- 
scious that  I  had  violated  the  law,  or  have  done  anything  in  the 
affair  that  tends  to  corrupt  the  good  morals  of  the  people.  And 
as  that  was  a  real  affair  that  happened  between  a  king  and  his 
subjects  that  we  repeated,  which  our  present  times  resemble  so 
much,  we  thought  our  time  well  spent  in  representing  to  a  few 
people  the  bad  consequences  attending  a  misled  king. 

"  And  men  of  the  most  refined  sense  and  learning  look  upon 
well-wrote  plays  to  be  very  improving.  Our  present  Majesty, 
George  the  third,  together  with  his  Brother,  Prince  Edward,  and 
two  sisters,  Princesses  Augusta  and  Elizabeth,  have  acted  upon 
the  Stage,  where  his  Majesty,  in  a  prologue,  spoke  thus  :  — 

" '  Wise  Authours  say,  let  youth  in  earliest  age, 
Rehearse  the  poet's  labours  on  the  Stage ; 
Teach  our  young  hearts  with  generous  fire  to  burn, 
And  feel  the  virtuous  sentiments  we  learn,'  &c. 

"  It  seems  he  justifies  and  highly  approves  of  them  by  his 
large  Donations  and  frequent  attendance,  &c.  ' 

"  I  have  not  had  opportunity  to  communicate  the  contents 
of  your  letter  to  those  of  the  Society,  but  shall  embrace  the 
first  opportunity  proper  for  such  an  affair.  And  it  is  probable 
that  you  will  hear  something  from  us  as  a  Society  yet,  and  there 
is  not  a  doubt  with  me  but  it  will  be  to  your  entire  satisfaction. 
Meanwhile,  I  believe  you  may  rest  assured  that  there  will  not 
be  any  further  performances  at  present,  by  this  Society. 

u  As  I  suppose  you  do  not  mean  to  seek  an  occasion  against 
us,  but  only  to  act  faithfully  in  your  office,  as  I  hope  I  have  not 
given  you  reason  to  do  it  out  of  ill-will  to  me,  nor  would  I  be- 
lieve you  would  do  it  on  such  principles,  so,  hoping  that  what's 
past  will  not  destroy  the  understanding  between  us, 

"  I  remain  your  well-wisher,  friend,  and  humble  servant, 

«L.  BALDWIN" 


38  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Most  friendships  among  young  persons  of  either  sex 
are  subjected  to  occasional  disturbances  of  feeling  arising 
from  misunderstanding  or  the  crossing  of  plans.  They 
generally  are  of  a  trifling  character,  and  are  most  apt  to 
originate  in  connection  with  pleasure-parties.  The  fol- 
lowing correspondence  seems  to  cover  an  incident  of 
this  sort,  in  a  fishing-excursion  at  Nahant. 

«  MR.  BALDWIN,  "  WoBURN>  June  4th'  I77°' 

"  SIR, —  Having  received  your  favour  of  this  afternoon,  I  find 
a  Question  proposed  to  me,  in  answer  to  which  I  say  —  first  —  I 
acted  wrong  in  leaving  Mr.  Johnson's  house  before  you  were 
ready.  But  as  to  slighting  your  company  or  friendship,  I  can 
truly  say  I  never  meant  it,  and  had  I  not  expected  you  would 
have  overtaken  us,  I  never  would  nor  should  have  left  the  house 
without  you.  But  you  may  say  I  had  no  reason  to  expect  you 
to  overtake  me.  —  In  answer  to  that,  I  say,  I  knew  nothing  of 
your  affairs  in  the  boat,  among  the  fish,  but  what  I  gathered 
from  Mr.  A.  Thompson's  talk  when  he  came  up.  He  said  he 
would  eat  his  dinner  and  tackle  the  horses  in  the  carriage  and  go 
along.  Dr.  Hay  said  he  would  eat  his  dinner  with  him  and  go 
along  slowly,  for  his  horse  was  very  dull.  He  said  you  would 
overtake  him  before  he  got  to  Lynn  town,  as  you  would  have 
nothing  to  do  but  to  eat  your  dinner  and  set  out  after. 

"  I  considered  no  more  of  the  matter,  but  ate  my  dinner  with 
him,  went  and  got  the  horses,  brought  yours  to  the  door  and 
paid  part  for  his  keeping,  and  left  word  with  Mrs.  Johnson  to 
receive  the  rest,  and  set  out,  not  doubting  but  you  would  over- 
take me. 

"  I  see  no  reason  why  you  was  so  much  more  affronted  with 
me  than  with  Dr.  Hay,  except  the  trouble  you  took  to  procure 
me  a  horse  (which  I  own  was  very  kind).  But  you  was  at 
much  trouble,  I  should  think,  in  taking  care  of  the  Doctor's 
fish,  in  gutting  and  cleaning  them,  wetting  and  nastying  yourself 
with  them.  Be  that  as  it  may  —  but  to  return. 

"  As   to   my  talk  after  our  return  from    Nahant,  you  must 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  39 

judge  of  it  as  of  a  person  in  anger,  as  I  suppose  we  both  were, 
and  I  believe  no  person  on  earth  can  answer  for  all  they  say 
when  in  anger.  I  believe  if  I  had  been  in  your  place  I  should 
have  been  angry  ;  but  this  I  must  affirm,  that  what  reason  I 
have  given  you  to  be  affronted  with  me,  it  was  not  through  any 
dislike  to  your  company,  or  in  any  way  wilfully  to  affront  you, 
but  entirely  through  inadvertence  and  unthoughtfulness.  For  if 
I  had  thought  a  moment  it  would  have  been  just  as  well  to  have 
stopped  till  you  was  ready,  and  then  both  of  us  have  overtaken 
the  Doctor.  But  as  I  did  not  do  it,  'tis  impossible  to  do  it  now. 
"  And  thus  I  think  I  have  answered  your  question  to  me  ; 
and  if  you  think  me  worth  your  further  notice,  I  shall  be  very 
glad  to  hear  further  from  you,  as  soon  as  shall  suit  your  con- 
venience. And  I  shall  conclude  with  subscribing  myself, 
Sir,  your  friend  and  humble  servant, 

BENJ*    THOMPSON. 

cc  MR.  THOMPSON, 

"  SIR,  —  I  have  just  received  your  letter,  by  hand  of  your 
little  Brother  [Josiah  Pierce,  3d].  The  sequel  of  which  (if 
sincerely,  sentimentally  wrote,  and  not  from  some  private  view 
dormant  to  me)  is  almost  to  my  entire  satisfaction.  And  had 
it  been  offered  the  day  after  we  were  at  Nahant,  it  had  pre- 
vented anything  further  than  a  reprimand,  which  my  then  pres- 
ent exasperated  state  must  have  discharged.  You  quere  why 
you  are  so  much  more  to  blame  than  the  Doctor.  I  consider  that 
I  did  not  expect  that  you  were  going  to  make  up  with  me  on 
the  Doctor's  account,  but  only  on  your  own.  So  I  understood 
only  with  you.  But  the  Doctor  must  think  differently  from 
what  he  said  the  other  day,  before  I  shall  think  of  him  as  I  did 
before.  And  if  he  catches  me  so  again  before  he  has  made  me 
some  satisfaction  for  what  is  past  I  '11  not  blame  him.  But  not 
to  detain  you  with  my  intentions  with  regard  to  the  Doctor,  I 
shall  proceed  to  inform  you,  if  my  company  is  agreeable  to  you, 
you  are  welcome,  and  any  apartment  in  my  house  at  present  — 
You  may  wonder  at  this  last  expression.  But  I  expect  to  have  an 
apartment  that  I  can't  admit  my  brother  into,  at  certain  times, 
before  long. 


40  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  But  not  forgetting  the  first  proposed  question,  I  answer  that 
I  arn  ready  to  join  in  such  a  Society  with  you,  and  shall  attend 
upon  it  as  far  as  my  business  will  permit  —  which  calls  for  me 
now.  So  I  must  conclude,  acknowledging  myself  your  recon- 
ciled friend,  and 

"  Humble  servant, 

"L.  BALDWIN. 

"  WOBURN,  June  5,  1770." 

The  letter  which  succeeds  is  without  date,  but  must 
have  been  written  before  the  preceding  had  been  re- 
ceived. The  variance  between  the  friends  could  not 
have  been  a  very  deep,  nor  a  permanent  one. 

u  MR.  BALDWIN, 

"  SIR,  —  Some  time  before  our  unhappy  difference  we  talked 
of  forming  a  Society  amongst  us,  for  propagating  learning  and 
useful  knowledge  by  means  of  questions  to  be  proposed  to  a 
certain  number  of  persons,  and  each  person  to  bring  his  answer 
to  said  question  proposed. 

"And  I  don't  doubt  but  by  this  means  we  might  render  our- 
selves very  useful  to  one  another,  and  I  see  no  just  cause  why 
our  late  difference  should  be  any  impediment  to  this  affair. 
But  if  my  being  one  in  said  Society  be  the  reason  for  your  not 
joining,  I  shall  be  very  sorry  to  be  the  cause  of  depriving  you 
of  so  much  pleasure  as  will  naturally  accrue  to  one  of  your 
genius. 

u  Sir,  I  should  be  extremely  glad  if  you  would  favor  me  with 
a  line  or  two  (since  I  am  denied  talking  with  you)  with  your 
sentiments  on  the  affair,  and  your  answer  to  this.  In  so  doing 
you  will  oblige, 

"Your  most  humble  servant, 

"BEN]*.  THOMPSON. 

"P.  S.  —  I  have  made  the  book  to  enter  the  questions  and 
answers  in. 

"  Yours,  &c.,  B.  T. 

"  To  him  I  thought  once  I  might  call 

"  my  friend,  MR.  L.  BALDWIN." 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  41 

The  place,  unnamed,  where  Thompson,  in  his  memo- 
randa, records  that  he  taught  school  "  six  weeks  and 
three  days,"  was  doubtless  the  pleasant  town  of  Brad- 
ford, on  the  Merrimack.  Here  he  was  so  well  esteemed 
for  faithful  services  that  he  was  sent  for  to  Concord, 
New  Hampshire,  higher  up  the  same  river,  by  Colonel 
Timothy  Walker,  and  offered  a  situation  in  a  school 
of  a  higher  grade,  which  would  secure  him  a  permanent 
position.  Concord,  under  its  Indian  name  of  Pena- 
cook,  had  been  claimed  on  its  settlement  by  the  Eng- 
lish as  being  within  the  bounds  and  jurisdiction  of 
Massachusetts.  As  such  it  had  been  incorporated,  in 
1733—  34,  as  a  town  in  Essex  County,  Massachusetts, 
under  the  name  of  Rumford,  probably  from  a  town 
of  that  name,  generally  called  Romford,  about  twelve 
miles  from  London,  whence  some  of  the  original  set- 
tlers in  the  New  England  wilderness  had  emigrated. 
The  name  has  interest  for  us,  as  it  was  chosen  by 
Benjamin  Thompson  for  a  title  when  he  was  made  a 
"  Count  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire."  The  name 
of  the  town  was  changed  to  Concord,  to  mark  the 
restoration  of  harmony  after  a  long  period  of  agita- 
tion as  to  its  provincial  jurisdiction  and  its  relations 
with  its  neighbors.  It  was  gratitude  which  prompted 
Thompson  to  ma^e  the  name  of  Rumford  titular, 
and,  as  we  have  seen,  he  expressed  most  tenderly  and 
reverently  his  sense  of  obligation  to  the  venerated 
minister  of  the  place, — his  patron,  guide,  and  father- 
in-law. 

Thompson  had  reason  for  this  gratitude  and  sense 
of  obligation.  Had  he  fallen  upon  peaceful  times, 
and  made  his  native  country  his  home  for  life,  the 
propitious  start  which  he  received  in  Concord  and  the 


42  Life  of  Coitnt  Rumford. 

friends  which  there  made  his  family  circle  would  have 
secured  his  high  position  and  success. 

The  Rev.  Timothy  Walker,  the  first  minister  of 
Concord,  New  Hampshire,  himself  a  native  of  Wo- 
burn,  and  connected  already  with  the  Thompson  family, 
had  joined  the  fortunes  of  the  early  settlers  in  1730  as 
their  spiritual  guide,  and  continued  in  their  service  as 
such  till  his  death,  September  2,  1782,  after  a  minis- 
try of  fifty-two  years.  He  was  one  of  that  class  of 
ministers,  characteristic  of  New  England  from  its  colo- 
nization down  nearly  to  our  own  times,  who,  while 
holding  a  position  and  authority  officially  and  conven- 
tionally supreme  among  the  people  of  a  settlement, 
proved  worthy  of  esteem,  and  used  their  influence  for 
unqualified  good.  Mr.  Walker  was  the  most  honored 
citizen  of  Concord,  as  well  as  its  beloved  minister,  and 
he  has  been  honored  in  the  line  of  his  descendants. 
He  had  been  thrice  sent  on  missions  to  England  on 
business  connected  with  the  disputes  about  the  juris- 
diction of  the  town  and  province,  and  had  there  im- 
pressed the  legal  counsel  which  he  employed,  and  the 
tribunal  before  which  he  was  heard,  in  a  manner  that 
insured  his  success.  He  also  used  his  opportunities 
abroad  for  observation  and  acquisition,  so  as  to  enhance 
his  influence  at  home.  His  son,  Colonel  Timothy 
Walker,  a  lawyer,  was  also  a  man  of  talent  and  po- 
sition. 

But  next  to  the  minister,  just  previous  to  Thomp- 
son's visit  to  Concord,  Colonel  Benjamin  Rolfe  held 
place  and  power  in  the  village.  He  was  the  squire, 
was  rich  and  public-spirited.  He  is  distinguished  as 
having  been  the  first  owner  and  driver  of  a  curricle  and 
a  pair  of  horses  in  New  Hampshire,  always  excepting 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  43 

the  Governor's  at  Portsmouth.  Colonel  Rolfe  having 
lived  as  a  bachelor  till  he  was  about  sixty  years  old,  then 
married  Sarah,  the  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Timothy 
Walker,  she  being  at  the  time  about  thirty.  Un- 
fortunately, some  of  the  interleaved  almanacs  in  which 
the  good  minister  was  in  the  habit  of  entering  his  official 
acts  and  matters  of  church  record  have  been  lost,  and 
thus  we  are  left  in  ignorance  of  some  dates  which  would 
interest  us.  The  Concord  town  records  say  that  Sarah 
Walker  was  born  October  6,  1739.  She  was  married 
to  Colonel  Rolfe  in  1769.  They  had  one  son,  after- 
wards Colonel  Paul  Rolfe.  The  father  died  Decem- 
ber 21,  1771,  in  his  sixty-second  year,  leaving  to  his 
widow  and  son  a  large  estate.  He  built  a  fine  house 
at  the  so-called  "  Eleven  Lots,"  since  known  as  the 
Rolfe  House.  It  was  here  that  his  widow,  as  the  wife 
of  Count  Rumford,  lived,  and  on  the  I9th  of  January, 
1792,  died  at  the  age  of  fifty-two. 

When  Benjamin  Thompson  went  to  Concord  as  a 
teacher  he  was  in  the  glory  of  his  youth,  not  having 
yet  reached  manhood.  His  friend  Baldwin  describes 
him  as  of  a  fine  manly  make  and  figure,  nearly  six  feet 
in  height,  of  handsome  features,  bright  blue  eyes,  and 
dark  auburn  hair.  He  had  the  manners  and  polish 
of  a  gentleman,  with  fascinating  ways,  and  an  ability 
to  make  himself  agreeable.  So  diligently,  too,  had  he 
used  his  opportunities  of  culture  and  reading  that  he 
might  well  have  shined  even  in  a  circle  socially  more  ex- 
acting than  that  to  which  he  was  now  introduced.  We 
may  anticipate  here  the  conclusion  to  which  the  review 
of  his  whole  career  will  lead  us,  —  that,  as  boy  or  man, 
he  was  never  one  to  allow  an  opportunity  of  advance- 
ment to  escape  him.  He  seems  to  have  given  satisfac- 


44  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

tion  as  a  teacher.  The  traditions  that  linger  in  the 
older  homes  at  Concord,  like  those  at  Wilmington, 
include  a  large  element  of  reminiscences  of  certain  ac- 
complishments and  activities  of  the  young  teacher  which 
were  not  of  a  strictly  official  character.  He  was  skilled 
in  vaulting  and  other  athletic  feats,  and  he  won  very 
early  in  his  life  the  repute  of  gallantry. 

When  Count  Rumford,  looking  back  from  the 
achievements  and  honors  of  his  foreign  career,  told 
his  friend  Pictet  of  his  deep  indebtedness  to  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Walker  for  kindly  oversight  and  counsel,  for 
fostering  patronage,  and  for  fatherly  love,  his  thoughts 
must  have  turned  into  feelings  as  he  tenderly  recalled 
some  happy  scenes  and  hours  in  that  country  parson- 
age. There,  and  to  the  house  of  the  younger  Walker, 
Thompson  often  went  to  give  account  of  his  peda- 
gogueship  and  to  enjoy  social  pleasures.  There,  too, 
and  at  other  places,  he  would  meet  the  daughter  and 
sister  in  her  early  widowhood.  He  told  Pictet  that 
she  married  him,  rather  than  he  her.  The  tradition 
is  that  she  facilitated  what  is  often  to  the  young  man 
the  difficult  crisis  in  a  relation  which  is  easy  before  and 
after  that  crisis  is  past.  An  engagement  was  speedily 
effected  between  the  parties  with  the  entire  approbation 
of  the  reverend  father. 

The  before-mentioned  curricle,  left  among  the  effects 
of  Colonel  Rolfe,  was  now  put  to  service.  The  lady 
invited  the  young  teacher,  who  was  no  longer  to  preside 
over  a  school,  to  accompany  her  on  an  excursion  to 
Boston,  a  drive  of  over  sixty  miles,  she  having  friends 
on  the  way  whose  hospitality  was  sure.  She  took  care, 
with  his  own  efficient  co-operation,  to  have  him  fur- 
nished in  Boston  with  all  that  was  requisite  at  that 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  45 

time  for  fashionable  array,  including  the  offices  of  tailor 
and  hair-dresser.  Of  course  the  color  of  his  garments 
was  his  own  favorite  scarlet,  ominous  of  the  ill  esteem 
into  which  he  was  soon  to  fall  as  too  friendly  to  those 
whose  military  garb  was  of  that  hue.  Tradition  re- 
ports, that  as  the  pair,  not  yet  married,  were  on  their 
homeward  way,  the  lady  ordered  the  curricle  to  stop 
at  the  door  of  Mrs.  Pierce's  house,  the  mother  of  her 
companion.  That  mother,  being  as  yet  ignorant  of  the 
change  that  had  come  over  the  fortunes  of  her  son,  was 
amazed  at  the  apparition  at  her  humble  doorway,  and 
especially  at  the  gorgeous  and  extravagant  array  of  her 
son,  the  village  schoolmaster,  and  the  not  idle,  but 
unprofitably  busy  experimenter.  She  is  reported  to 
have  given  vent  to  her  surprise  in  the  rebuking  ques- 
tion, "Why,  Ben!  my  son,  how  could  you  go  and 
lay  out  all  your  winter's  earnings  in  finery  ? "  The 
tradition  continues  that  the  mother,  hesitating  some- 
what about  the  character  of  her  son's  female  com- 
panion and  the  explanation  given  by  her,  was  finally, 
through  the  intervention  of  Dr.  Hay,  made  to  under- 
stand the  circumstances  of  the  case.  She  still  wished 
time  to  think  upon  it,  but  on  the  next  day  gave  her 
consent.  (See  Appendix.) 

Thompson  said  that  he  was  married  "  at  the  age  of 
nineteen."  Here,  again,  the  loss  of  the  minister's 
almanac  leaves  us  in  ignorance  of  a  date.  Benjamin 
Thompson  and  Mrs.  Sarah  Walker  Rolfe  were  mar- 
ried previously  to  January  18,  1773.  Their  daughter, 
and  only  child,  Sarah,  late  Countess  of  Rumford,  was 
born  October  18,  1774,  in  the  Rolfe  mansion.  I  have 
found  one  date  given  for  the  marriage  as  "  about  No- 
vember, 1772,"  and  it  probably  did  take  place  then,  or 


46  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

nearer  the  close  of  that  year.  At  that  time  Thompson 
would  have  been  but  four  or  five  months  short  of 
twenty  years  of  age,  while  his  wife  would  have  been 
thirty-three.  This  disproportion  of  years  might  have 
proved  infelicitous  in  itself,  had  not  a  more  serious 
misfortune  soon  resulted  in  a  separation  between  them. 
Whether  we  are  to  recognize  in  this  disparity  of  the 
parties  one  reason  for  the  seeming  indifference  of  the 
husband  when  in  exile  to  the  wife  whom  he  had  left 
at  home,  must  be  referred  to  the  judgment  of  the  reader. 
Mrs.  Thompson,  through  her  former  husband,  had 
made  acquaintance  at  Portsmouth  with  Governor  Went- 
worth  and  others  in  prominent  society  there.  Thither 
she  took  her  new  husband  on  their  marriage  tour,  and 
he  soon  became  known  to  the  Governor.  The  proba- 
ble date  of  this  bridal  tour  furnishes  another  reason  for 
believing  that  the  marriage  of  Mr.  Thompson  took 
place  in  November,  1772.  On  the  i3th  of  the 
month  there  was  a  grand  military  muster  and  review 
at  Dover,  ten  miles  from  Portsmouth,  of  the  officers 
and  soldiers  of  the  Second  Provincial  Regiment  of  New 
Hampshire.  Governor  Wentworth  and  some  of  his 
Council,  with  many  gentlemen  and  ladies  from  Ports- 
mouth, attended  it  with  considerable  display  and  cere- 
mony. The  Rev.  Dr.  Belknap,  the  admirable  historian 
of  New  Hampshire,  and  then  the  minister  of  Dover, 
preached  on  the  occasion  a  sermon  which  was  thought 
by  the  officers  worthy  of  the  press,  and  it  was  published 
at  their  request.  The  festivities,  which  began  in  Dover, 
were  transferred  for  their  continuance  to  Portsmouth. 
The  tradition  has  always  been  that  Mr.  Thompson  here 
attracted  the  attention  of  the  Governor  at  the  review, 
was  introduced  to  him,  and  was  on  the  day  following  a 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  47 

guest  at  his  table.  For  the  good  fortune,  if  such  it 
really  were,  which  thus  secured  to  him  a  questionable 
honor,  he  was  indebted,  as  we  shall  find  that  he  also 
was  eleven  years  afterwards  on  the  continent  of  Europe, 
to  his  fine  appearance  as  he  rode  on  horseback,  as  a 
spectator  of  a  military  review.  Portsmouth  was  then 
the  centre  of  much  wealth  and  refinement.  It  had  a 
mercantile  class  engaged  in  extensive  business.  Its 
crown  officers,  with  others  in  government  employ,  and 
their  associates  in  the  administration  of  local  affairs, 
made  an  aristocracy  of  influence  and  fashion.  It  was 
a  time  of  growing  alienations  and  fermenting  discords, 
and  the  more  prominent  or  influential  the  position  of 
any  individual,  the  more  necessary  was  it  for  him  to  com- 
mit himself  to  a  side,  and,  having  done  so,  to  act  and 
speak  as  no  longer  neutral.  Governor  Wentworth  rec- 
ognized in  young  Thompson,  not  only  the  representa- 
tive of  a  family  already  prominent  in  the  public  and 
social  life  of  his  Province,  but  also  a  man  of  unmis- 
takable promise,  and  of  qualities  that  would  be  likely 
to  work  vigorously  for  any  interests  which  he  should 
espouse,  especially  if  they  were  identified  with  his  own. 
He  determined,  therefore,  to  make  him  an  object  of 
marked  favoritism.  A  vacancy  having  occurred  in  a 
majorship  in  the  Second  Provincial  Regiment  of  New 
Hampshire,  Governor  Wentworth  at  once  commis- 
sioned Thompson  to  fill  it.  It  was  only  as  a  matter 
of  patronage  from  the  royal  Governor  that  the  receipt 
of  such  a  commission  might  be  supposed  to  cool  the 
spirit  of  patriotism  in  the  young  officer.  It  was  not 
the  place,  but  the  source  and  manner  of  his  elevation 
to  it,  that  made  it  embarrassing  to  its  possessor  in  his 
subsequent  course.  His  fellow-officers  found  no  diffi- 


48  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

culty,  when  the  time  of  trial  came,  in  deciding  whether 
they  were  to  engage  for  or  against  the  liberty  of  their 
native  land. 

But  this  sudden  elevation  of  Thompson,  without 
military  knowledge  or  experience,  without  even  any 
personal  claim,  over  men  in  the  line  of  fair  promotion 
who  had  seen  actual  service  and  had  won  their  position, 
was  a  piece  of  simple  folly  on  the  part  of  the  Governor;  , 
and  it  was  an  act  of  weakness,  if  not  of  pure  vanity, 
in  Thompson  to  accept  it,  though  it  is  affirmed  that  he 
had  not  asked  it.  He  had  himself  not  yet  come  of  legal 
age,  and  he  was  lifted  over  veterans,  —  the  military  men 
with  well-known  titles,  as  lieutenants  and  captains,  in 
different  country  towns,  when  those  titles  were  Nsome- 
thing  more  than  tavern  or  roadside  compliments.  The 
young  officer  became  the  subject  of  jealous  feeling  and 
of  hostile  criticism.  Every  subordinate,  as  well  as  many 
of  his  superiors,  were  soon  found  to  be  his  effective 
enemies. 

He  made  frequent  calls  upon  the  Governor,  and  it  is 
evident  that  he  appreciated  and  improved  his  oppor- 
tunities. The  following  letter  to  his  friend  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Williams,  of  Bradford,  afterwards  Professor  at  the 
College,  indicates  the  high  spirits  in  which  Thompson 
returned  from  one  of  his  visits  to  Portsmouth. 

"CONCORD,  Monday,  Jan'y  i8th,  1773. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  Last  Friday  I  had  the  honour  to  wait  upon  his 
Excellency,  Governour  Wentworth,  at  Portsmouth,  where  I  was 
very  politely  and  agreeably  entertained  for  the  space  of  an  hour 
and  a  half.  I  had  not  been  in  his  company  long  before  I  pro- 
ceeded upon  business,  viz.  to  ask  his  Excellency  whether 
ever  the  White  Mountains  had  been  surveyed.  He  answering 
me  in  the  negative,  I  proceeded  to  acquaint  him  that  there  was 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  49 

a  number  of  persons  who  had  thought  of  making  an  expedition 
that  way  next  summer,  and  asked  him  whether  it  would  be 
agreeable  to  his  Excellency.  He  said  it  would  be  extremely 
agreeable,  seemed  excessively  pleased  with  the  plan,  promised 
to  do  all  that  lay  in  his  power  to  forward  it,  —  said  that  he  had 
a  number  of  Mathematical  instruments  (such  as  two  or  three 
telescopes,  Barometer,  Thermometer,  Compass,  &c.)  at  Went- 
worth  House  (at  Wolfeborough,  only  about  30  miles  from 
the  mountains),  all  which,  together  with  his  library,  should  be 
at  our  service.  That  he  should  be  extremely  glad  to  wait  on 
us,  and  to  crown  all  he  promised,  if  there  were  no  public  busi- 
ness which  rendered  his  presence  at  Portsmouth  absolutely  neces- 
sary, that  he  would  take  his  tent  equipage  and  go  with  us  to 
the  mountain  and  tarry  with  us,  and  assist  us  till  our  survey, 
which  he  said  he  supposed  would  take  about  12  or  14 
days !!!  —  !!  —  !!!!! 

"  My  dear  Mr.  Williams,  is  not  this  a  sweet  gentleman  ? 
one  exactly  suited  to  our  taste,  —  how  charming !  how  con- 
descending !  how  easy  and  pleasant  in  conversation  !  But  you 
can  form  no  adequate  idea  of  him  till  you  have  been  in  his 
company.  But  to  proceed.  His  Excellency  asked  me  what 
gentlemen  I  thought  would  be  likely  to  go.  I  told  him  I  had 
mentioned  it  to  several,  but  more  especially  to  Mr.  Williams 
of  Bradford,  who  was  a  gentleman  famous  for  bis  Mathematical 
Genius,  &c.,  &c.,  &c.,  &c.  His  Excellency  answered  that  he  had 
no  particular  acquaintance  with  you,  but  that  he  had  heard  of 
you  as  being  a  great  Mathematician  !  and  Philosopher !  and  should 
be  extremely  glad  of  your  company  and  assistance  in  the  affair. 
And  further  !  he  desired  me  to  give  his  compliments  to  you, 
and  desire  you  to  attend. 

"  But  stop  !  I  will  not  tell  you  any  more  till  you  come  and 
see  me  as  you  promised  ;  then  we  will  lay  the  whole  plan  of 
operation,  and  I  will  tell  you  a  charming  secret,  —  something 
you  would  give  the  world  to  know.  'T  is  nothing  about 
Magnetism,  nor  Electricity,  nor  Optics,  nor  Evaporation,  nor 
Flatulances,  nor  Earthquakes.  No,  but  't  is  something  twice 
as  pretty  !  something  entirely  new  ;  but  it  can't  be  revealed 
4 


50  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

except  in  the  town  of  Concord.  And  I  do  solemnly  protest 
by  the  third  joint  of  St.  Peter's  great  toe,  that  unless  you  come 
and  see  me  this  winter,  you  shall  never  know  this  grand 
Arcanum. 

"There  will  be  an  ordination  at  Hopkinton  next  week  on 
Wednesday,  and  't  is  only  six  miles  from  our  house.  Pray, 
try  and  come,  so  as  to  attend,  if  possible.  If  not,  come  as  soon 
as  you  can,  for  't  is  charming  sleighing  as  ever  was  known. 

"  Mrs.  Thompson's  Compliments  to  you  and  your  lady,  and 
begs  you  would  give  us  the  Pleasure  of  waiting  on  you  both  at 
Concord  very  soon. 

"  Interim,  we  both  remain  Yours  and  Your  Lady's  most 
Obedient 

"  Humble  Servt8, 

"BENJA  THOMPSON."* 

One  might  imagine  the  something  "new"  and  "  so 
pretty  "  here  referred  to  was  a  fathers  proud  trophy 
of  a  babe.  But  this  could  not  be. 

We  may  suppose  that  Major  Thompson,  with  his 
versatility  of  talent,  would  not  neglect  any  means  of 
qualifying  himself  in  knowledge  and  practice  for  a  mili- 
tary career.  As  we  shall  see,  when  on  his  way  ten-years 
afterwards  to  offer  his  services  as  a  soldier  to  the  Aus- 
trians,  he  confesses  to  having  been  passionately  engaged 
with  ardor  for  martial  work.  I  am  inclined  to  think 
that  the  entry  in  his  memorandum-book,  already  copied, 
of  "  Directions  for  the  Back  Sword,"  is  a  memorial  of 
his  purpose  and  effort  to  train  himself  in  the  use  of 
weapons  as  became  a  field-officer.  He  may  have  taken 
lessons  from  the  Mr.  McAlpine  to  whom  he  credits 
those  directions,  as  I  find  the  advertisements  of  that 
teacher  in  the  New  Hampshire  Gazette  of  the  dates 

*  Copy  of  a  letter  of  Benj.  Thompson  to  Rev.  Samuel  Williams,  LL.  D.,  then 
at  Meredith,  N.  H.     I  am  indebted  for  this  letter  to  Mr.  Jos.  B.  Walker  of  Concord. 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  51 

corresponding  to  Major  Thompson's  commission.  Mr. 
Donald  McAlpine  appears  to  have  been  an  itinerant 
practitioner,  having  pupils  at  Portsmouth,  Newbury- 
port,  and  several  other  places. 

In  his  essay  on  his  Experiments  in  Gunpowder,  made 
in  England  in  1778  and  1779,  Thompson  speaks  of 
himself  as  having  been  cc  for  many  years  "  engaged  in 
practical  investigations  of  that  subject.  It  would  ap- 
pear that  this  was  his  first  really  scientific  labor.  The 
knowledge  and  skill  which  he  professed  when  he  first 
experimented  abroad  are  evidences  of. what  he  had  al- 
ready done  here  at  Salem,  Woburn,  and  Concord,  and 
afterwards,  for  a  short  time,  in  the  camp  of  the  New 
England  forces  at  Cambridge. 

For  a  brief  interval  Thompson  comes  before  us  as  a 
gentleman  farmer,  with  a  zeal  exceeding  that  of  the 
husbandmen  around  him  who  were  content  to  culti- 
vate native  crops.  He  had  broad  acres  to  till,  and 
employed  many  laborers,  among  them  some  deserters 
from  the  British  regiments  in  Boston. 

Here  we  have  Thompson  as  a  farmer. 

"CONCORD,  July  1 7th,  1773. 

"  MR.  L.  BALDWIN, 

"  SIR,  —  As  I  am  engaged  in  husbandry  I  have  a  mind  to  try 
some  experiments  in  that  way,  and  as  my  Mother  informs  me 
you  are  about  to  send  to  England  for  some  Garden-seeds,  — 
against  the  spring,  —  I  should  be  extremely  obliged  if  you  would 
send  the  enclosed  memorandum  (or,  rather,  a  copy  of  it)  to  Lon- 
don, so  that  I  may  have  the  seeds  mentioned  therein  (or  as 
many  of  them  as  can  be  had)  as  early  in  the  spring  as  possi- 
ble. You  may  depend  upon  the  cash  for  them  as  soon  as  they 
arrive,  together  with  an  ample  reward  for  your  trouble  and  ex- 
penses. 

u  Please  to  write  for  them  to  come  as  soon  as  possible,  for  I 


52  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

have  1 8  or  20  acres  of  land  to  lay  down  to  grass  in  the  spring, 
and  shall  want  the  grass-seed  very  much  and  very  early. 

"  Last  evening  I  had  the  pleasure  to  receive  a  letter  from  his 
Excellency  Governor  Wentworth,  in  which,  among  others,  is 
the  following  Paragraph,  vi7,.  c  The  many  unexpected  affairs 
of  business  that  have  hitherto  employed  me  has  consumed  so 
much  of  my  time  this  summer,  that  I  am  compelled  to  give  up 
my  proposed  tour  to  the  White  Hills  for  this  year.  But  I  shall 
be  very  glad  to  see  you  at  Wolfboro'  at  any  time  it  may  suit 
your  convenience,  as  I  hope  to  get  my  family  there  by  the  last 
week  of  August,'  &c. 

u  Thus  you  see  we  are  disappointed  this  year  ;  perhaps  next 
may  prove  more  favorable. 

"  I  received  your  letters  per  Mr.  Sables,  but  had  not  oppor- 
tunity to  write  by  him. 

"  Mrs.  Thompson  sends  compliments  (and  we  trust  by  this 
time  congratulations  would  not  be  improper)  to  you  and  your 
Lady.  [They  were  just  in  season  for  a  child  born  June  22d.] 

"  Have  nothing  new  —  so  must  conclude  with  telling  you  the 
old  story  over  again  —  viz*,  that  I  am  with  great  truth  and 
esteem 

"Your  real  friend  a"-1  Humble  Servant, 

"BEN]*  THOMPSON. 

"  To  MR.  BALDWIN,  Merchant  in  Woburn." 

"  CONCORD,  August  21,  1774. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  have  been  extremely  busy  this  Summer,  or 
I  should  have  given  myself  the  pleasure  of  coming  to  see  you, 
but  have  not  been  able  to  get  away  as  yet. 

"  The  seeds  which  you  were  so  kind  as  to  send  to  England 
for  on  my  behalf,  I  will  come  or  send  for  as  soon  as  I  can 
conveniently,  when  I  will  pay  you,  together  with  ample  satis- 
faction for  my  not  sending  for  them  sooner.  I  should  have  sent 
a  hand  on  purpose  for  them,  but  the  season  of  their  usefulness 
was  past  for  this  year  before  I  received  advice  of  their  arrival. 

"  I  know  you  must  be  extremely  altered,  or  a  Philosophical 
and  Mathematical  Correspondence  would  be  very  agreeable  to 


Life  of  Co^lnt  Rumford.  53 

you.  I  have,  therefore,  taken  the  liberty  to  propose  the  follow- 
ing Problem,  which  I  send  you  not  so  much  for  the  difficulty  as 
the  oddness  of  the  Solution. 

"  A  certain  Cistern  has  three  Brass-Cocks  :  one  of  which  will 
empty  it  in  15  minutes,  one  in  30  minutes,  and  the  other  in 
60  minutes.  Qu  ?  How  long  would  it  take  to  empty  the  Cis- 
tern if  all  three  of  the  Cocks  were  to  be  opened  at  once  ? 

"  If  you  are  fond  of  a  correspondence  of  this  kind,  and  will 
favour  me  with  an  easy  question,  Arithmetical  or  Algebraical,  I 
will  endeavour  to  give  as  good  an  account  of  it  as  possible.  If 
you  find  out  an  answer  to  the  above  immediately,  I  hope  you 
will  not  take  it  as  an  affront,  my  proposing  anything  which  you 
may  think  so  easy,  for  I  must  confess  I  scarce  ever  met  with 
any  little  notion  that  puzzled  me  so  much  in  my  life. 

"  You  must  give  me  leave  to  complain  a  little  of  your  un- 
kindness  in  not  letting  me  have  so  much  as  one  line  by  so  good 
an  opportunity  as  Mr.  Richardson.  You  used  to  profess  friend- 
ship for  me,  I  really  thought  it  was  not  mere  profession  only. 
And  I  cannot  but  have  charity  for  you  yet.  I  suppose  business 
—  the  cares  of  the  world  —  prevented.  Pray,  don't  fail  to  let 
me  hear  from  you  as  often  as  possible.  And  believe  me  Really 
to  be  your  Sincere  friend,  and 

"  Humble  Servant, 

"BENJf  THOMPSON. 

"  P.  S.* —  Please  to  make  mine  and  Mrs.  Thompson's  com- 
pliments to  your  Parents  and  Lady. 

"  To  MR.  LOAMMI  BALDWIN,  Merchant  in  Woburn." 

It  would  have  been  natural,  and  according  to  the 
common  precedents  of  the  time  and  of  the  community 
in  which  he  lived,  for  this  promising  and  well-supported 
young  man  to  have  looked  for  civil  office,  first  as  a 
representative  of  Concord  in  the  Provincial  Assembly 
of  New  Hampshire,  and  then  as  one  of  the  Governor's 
Council.  But  he  would  have  needed  what  he  seems 
not  to  have  secured  or  enjoyed,  the  hearty  confidence 


54  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

and  attachment  of  the  common  people,  to  have  obtained 
any  office  in  their  gift.  The  time  was  near  at  hand 
when  he  found  that  patronage  from  any  other  quarter 
than  that  of  the  people  was  at  least  a  disadvantage,  not 
only  as  a  bar  to  popular  favor,  but  also  as  a  reasonable 
ground  of  suspicion. 

It  is  pleasant,  however,  to  close  this  chapter  of  the 
biography  of  Benjamin  Thompson,  leaving  him  at  the 
first  stage  of  success  in  a  course  which  was  to  be  splen- 
didly illustrated  by  distinctions  and  titular  honors.  As 
to  the  shadows  which  we  are  now  to  trace  as  gath- 
ering around  his  opening  manhood,  we  may  study  them 
either  in  their  own  disagreeable  aspects,  or  as  subse- 
quent incidents  and  acts  tend  to  drive  them,  if  not  into 
oblivion,  at  least  into  a  considerate  and  softened  esti- 
mate of  their  relatively  unimportant  character. 


CHAPTER    II. 

Revolutionary  Portents.  —  Division  of  Parties.  —  Governor 
Wentworth.  —  Thompson 's  Visits  to  Portsmouth.  —  Mili- 
tary Review.  —  Intimacy  and  Favor  with  the  Gov- 
ernor. —  Commissioned  Major.  —  Jealousies  and  Enmi- 
ties. —  Accused  of  Toryism.  —  Meditated  Outrage.  — 
Flight  from  Concord.  —  Refuge  in  Woburn,  Charlestown, 
and  Boston.  —  His  Petition  and  Examination.  —  Letters 
to  Mr.  Walker.  —  Visits  the  Camp.  —  Seeks  Employ- 
ment. —  Departure.  —  Newport.  —  Secret  Residence  in 
Boston.  —  Sent  to  England.  —  Confiscation  of  his  Prop- 
erty. —  Proscribed. 

THE  genius  of  which  young  Thompson  had  given 
such  early '  and  marked  tokens  might  possibly 
have  found  at  the  time  a  sphere  for  its  development 
and  culture  in  his  native  country,  either  in  peace  or  in 
war.  The  revolutionary  struggle  which  began  with  his 
opening  manhood,  continuing  for  seven  years,  and  clos- 
ing with  heavy  exactions  upon  all  men  of  mental  vigor 
and  executive  faculties  in  the  arduous  work  of  organ- 
izing an  infant  republic,  would  certainly  have  afforded 
for  him  a  field  in  which  he  would  as  certainly  have  en- 
gaged his  eminent  abilities  and  won  high  distinction. 
It  seemed  as  if  accident,  or  rather  the  influence  of  cir- 
cumstances independent  of,  and  even  in  opposition  to, 
his  own  avowed  inclinations,  decided  for  him  the  issue 
whether  he  should  side  with  his  native  country  or 


56  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

against  it  in  its  war  of  freedom.  Happily  for  him, 
however,  and  for  us,  the  great  work  of  his  life  and 
his  Cervices  to  humanity  lead  us  away  from  battle- 
fields, and  from  the  limitations  of  what  is  called  pa- 
triotism. 

It  is  probable,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  bent  of 
Thompson's  genius,  and  the  qualities  of  his  natural 
character  and  temperament,  needed  a  foreign  field  for 
their  most  favorable  and  congenial  exercise.  Like 
Franklin,  he  knew  that  he  would  meet  with  a.  fuller 
appreciation,  and  find  a  stimulus  and  an  efficient  patron- 
age, only  in  the  fellowship  of  men  who  had  talent, 
means,  and  leisure  for  scientific  inquiries  and  pursuits. 

It  becomes  necessary  now  to  set  down  a  matter-of- 
fact  statement  of  the  circumstances  which  led  Thomp- 
son to  abandon  his  home,  leaving  behind  him  his  wife, 
to  whom  he  owed  so  much,  and  whom  he  was  never 
to  see  again,  and  his  infant  child;  deserting,  likewise, 
the  cause  of  his  native  country,  though  with  no  pur- 
pose at.  the  time,  as  it  would  appear,  of  taking  part 
against  it.  I  shall  content  myself  with  a  relation  of 
those  circumstances,  not  interposing  any  judgment  of 
my  own  as  a  plea  in  his  defence  or  as  a  verdict  of  con- 
demnation. The  circumstances  will  have  interest  in 
themselves,  illustrating  very  pointedly,  in  the  case  of 
an  individual,  an  episode  of  history  which  bore  with 
great  severity  upon  the  fortunes  of  large  numbers. 

Young  Thompson  was  essentially  a  courtier.  He 
manifested  in  early  manhood  the  tastes,  aptitudes,  and 
cravings  which  prompt  their  possessor,  however  hum- 
bly born,  and  under  whatever  repression  from  sur- 
rounding influences,  to  push  his  way  in  the  world  by 
seeking  the  acquaintance  and  winning  the  patronage 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  57 

of  his  social  superiors,  who  have  favors  and  distinctions 
to  bestow.  Conscious  of  possessing  talents  and  capaci- 
ties which  would  make  the  labors  of  a  country  farmer, 
or  even  of  a  pedagogue,  distasteful,  as  well  as  inadequate 
for  him,  he  would  hardly  be  a  congenial  companion  for 
those  around  him.  The  facility  with  which  he  adapted 
himself  to  court-life  in  Europe,  to  intimacies  with 
nobles,  to  the  ways  of  fashion,  and  to  the  culture  of  the 
intellectual  classes,  reflects  back  upon  his  early  years 
the  certainty  that  he  could  not  have  been  popular  with 
his  townsfolk  and  neighbors,  or  even  a  sociable  com- 
panion with  his  own  kin.  He  was  regarded  from  his 
boyhood  as  being  above  his  position ;  and  while  his 
inconstancy  of  Occupation  gave  him  the  repute  of  an 
idler  and  a  dreamer,  his  dabblings  with  science  were 
not  interpreted  as  promises  of  a  fruitful  and  serviceable 
life.  He  had  also  a  noble  and  imposing  figure,  with 
great  personal  beauty,  and  with  those  whose  acquaint- 
ance he  cultivated  he  was  most  affable  and  winning 
in  his  manners.  He  had  never  been  really  indolent, 
but  was  ever  seeking  to  rise.  Doubtless,  in  the  rustic 
labor  which  in  his  boyhood  took  him  by  himself  into 
the  forest  to  chop  a  load  of  wood  and  to  team  it  to  the 
market,  to  meet  the  frugal  expenses  of  his  livelihood, 
he  kept  his  mind  engaged  upon  the  philosophy  of 
even  that  work.  We  may  be  sure  that  he  learned  to 
wield  the  axe  with  scientific  skill,  and  to  economize  his 
blows,  while  all  the  facilities  of  sledding,  and  logging, 
and  adjusting  a  load  would  be  acquired  by  experiment. 
The  traditions  already  referred  to  of  his  extraneous 
performances  in  gymnastics  while  a  school-teacher,  fail 
to  report  to  us  what  we  may  reasonably  imagine,  — 
that  he  was  the  most  diligent  and  acquisitive  pupil  in 


58  Life  of  Coimt  Rumford. 

his  own  school,  and  that  there  was  no  instructive  book 
in  the  village,  or  in  the  not  scanty  library  of  his  father- 
in-law,  who  had  thrice  been  a  sojourner  in  England, 
whose  contents  had  not  attracted  him. 

His  marriage,  enabling  him  to  give  over  the  necessity 
of  school-keeping,  furnished  him  the  leisure  and  the 
means  for  making  excursions  at  his  pleasure.  Besides 
his  acquaintance  with  Governor  Wentworth  at  Ports- 
mouth, he  had  also,  on  visits  with  his  wife  to  Boston, 
been  introduced  to  Governor  Gage,  and  several  of  the 
British  officers,  and  had  partaken  of  their  hospitalities. 
Two  soldiers  who  had  deserted  from  the  army  in  Bos- 
ton, finding  their  way  to  Concord,  had  been  employed 
by  him  upon  his  farm.  Thinking  they  would  do  better 
to  return  to  their  ranks  and  their  comrades,  they  had 
sought  for  the  intervention  of  their  employer  to  secure 
them  immunity  from  punishment.  Thompson  ad- 
dressed a  few  lines  for  this  purpose  to  General  Gage, 
asking,  at  the  same  time,  that  his  own  agency  in  their 
behalf  should  not  be  disclosed. 

I  can  find  no  positive  and  direct  evidence  of  any 
unfriendly  or  unpatriotic  act  done  by  Mr.  Thompson, 
or  even  of  any  speech  of  such  a  character  attributed  to 
him.  None  such  is  upon  record.  His  friend,  Colonel 
Baldwin,  stood  by  him,  as  would  appear,  confidently 
and  heartily.  But  his  brother-in-law,  the  Hon.  Tim- 
othy Walker,  next  to  his  father  the  most  influential 
man  in  Concord,  with  other  friends,  by  advising  his 
leaving  that  town,  help  us  to  conjecture  what  may  have 
been  the  facts  of  the  case,  though  no  witness  ever  ap- 
peared to  testify  against  him  when  opportunity  was 
given.  Besides  his  acquaintance  with  the  royal  gov- 
ernors, the  patronage  he  had  received  from  one  of  them, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  59 

the  intimacy  in  which  he  was  supposed  to  stand  with 
the  other,  the  return  of  the  deserters,  and  any  degree 
of  unpopularity  which  he  may  have  had  with  his  towns- 
men, Thompson  had  probably  spoken  his  mind  with 
some  freedom,  in  a  way  to  check  the  rising  spirit  of 
the  people,  in  palliation  of  the  measures  of  the  King 
and  ministry,  and  in  distrust  of  the  ability  and  success 
of  the  resistance  which  was  to  be  made.  This,  I  am 
inclined  to  think,  was  the  extent  of  his  "  Toryism," 
aggravated  by  his  youth,  and  perhaps  not  relieved  by 
any  modesty  of  utterance,  caution,  or  deference.  There 
were  inflammable  materials  around  him.  There  were 
very  many  older  and  far  more  conspicuous  men  than 
himself  who,  in  the  earliest  stage  of  the  revolutionary 
struggle,  were  forced  against  their  own  inclinations  to 
take  side  with  the  royalist  party,  because  they  had 
spoken  some  hasty  or  deliberate  words  of  hesitancy, 
and  had  been  roughly  treated  for  them. 

The  actual  rupture  into  hostilities  against  the  British 
authority  and  arms  had  come  suddenly,  especially  in 
New  Hampshire,  where,  notwithstanding,  it  was  de- 
cisive. Governor  Wentworth  had  himself  been  quite 
popular  in  his  Province.  Before  he  had  succeeded  his 
uncle  in  his  office,  he  had  been  strongly  opposed  to 
every  measure  of  Great  Britain  which  was  regarded  as 
encroaching  upon  our  liberties.  He  had  even  been 
sent  to  England  as  the  agent  of  the  Assembly  to  pro- 
cure the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act ;  and  he  had  shown 
a  great  deal  of  public  spirit  in  his  efforts  and  measures 
to  improve  the  Province  by  opening  and  settling  its 
interior  and  fostering  its  rising  college.  Mr.  Thompson 
might  well  allege,  as  he  did,  the  fact  that  Governor 
Wentworth,  when  he  made  him  his  friend,  was  warmly 


60  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

esteemed.  But  he  was  nevertheless  faithful  to  his 
official  trust  when  the  royal  authority  was  defied,  though 
he  acted  most  Unwisely  and  blindly. 

Yet  some  of  the  foremost  men  in  all  the  Colonies  — 
men  of  intelligence,  rectitude,  high  character,  and  un- 
questionable patriotism  —  hesitated  as  to  the  rightfulness 
or  the  policy  of  the  first  measures  which  initiated  the 
Revolution.  Some  such  honestly  doubted  whether  the 
colonists  had  real,  substantial  grievances,  and  if,  having 
such,  they  ought  not  to  seek  quite  different  means  of 
redress.  We  can  afford  in  these  days,  and  in  the  calm- 
ness of  our  retrospect,  to  distinguish  between  the  facts 
of  history  and  the  rhetoric  of  demonstrative  orators. 
We  certainly  must  distinguish  between  the  grounds  for 
hesitancy  and  mistrust  which  influenced  wise  and  honest 
men  who  were  obliged  to  take  a  side  before  actual  hos- 
tilities opened,  and  the  character  of  the  struggle  as  it 
went  on.  The  exasperation  of  feeling  which  followed 
upon  the  successive  measures  and  acts  of  the  British 
government  and  forces,  in  burning  our  towns  and  sea- 
ports, and  employing  mercenary  troops,  and  in  other 
outrages,  doubtless  made  many  of  the  "  Tories  "  regret 
their  loyalty,  while  at  the  same  time  it  intensified  the 
popular  acrimony  against  them. 

Ten  years  before  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  there  had 
been  even  an  era  of  good  feeling,  in  the  New  England 
Colonies  especially,  towards  the  British  monarchy  and 
ministry.  The  Indian  and  French  War,  in  which 
Thompson's  own  kin  had  many  of  them  done  good 
service,  had  happily  freed  the  frontier  towns  of  all  the 
apprehensions  and  horrors  of  savage  inroads,  and  the 
treasuries  of  the  other  settlements  from  the  exactions 
of  a  military  force  for  their  defence.  Though  the 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  61 

Colonies  themselves  had  contributed  men  and  money 
to  this  tedious  and  costly  warfare,  yet  the  exchequer 
and  the  soldiery  of  England  had  furnished  the  forces 
without  which  we  should  have  been  powerless.  When 
the  Prime  Minister,  Grenville,  in  1764,  called  the  agents 
of  our  Colonies  together  in  England,  he  said  to  them 
that  the  burden  left  by  the  French  war  was  a  debt  of 
seventy-three  millions  sterling.  The  protection  we  had 
received,  of  course,  excited  a  feeling  of  gratitude  among 
our  people,  and  the  more  loyal  among  them  thought 
that  their  share  in  the  cost  of  government  was  light, 
and  that  it  was  compensated.  In  1763,  Mr.  James 
Otis,  afterwards  to  be  known  as  the  leading  patriot, 
in  his  address  as  Moderator  of  the  first  town  meeting 
held  in  Boston,  after  the  peace,  said :  "  No  other  con- 
stitution of  civil  government  has  ever  yet  appeared  in 
the  world  so  admirably  adapted  to  the  preservation  of 
the  great  purposes  of  liberty  and  knowledge  as  that 
of  Great  Britain.  Every  person  in  America  is,  of  com- 
mon right,  by  acts  of  Parliament  and  the  laws  of  God, 
entitled  to  all  the  essential  privileges  of  Britons.  The 
true  interests  of  Great  Britain  and  her  Colonies  are 
mutual ;  and  what  God  in  his  providence  has  united, 
let  no  man  dare  attempt  to  pull  asunder."  Duties  had 
been  reduced,  and  now  the  odious  Stamp  Act  had  been 
repealed,  and  the  colonists  had  assurance  that  their  last 
and  fundamental  grievance,  of  taxation  without  repre- 
sentation, would  be  redressed. 

Our  candor,  therefore,  in  these  days,  must  persuade 
us  to  allow  that  there  were  reasons,  or,  at  least,  preju- 
dices and  apprehensions,  which  might  lead  honest  and 
right-hearted  men,  lovers  and  friends  of  their  birth- 
land,  to  oppose  the  rising  spirit  of  independence  as 


_ 
62  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

inflamed  by  demagogues,  and  as  foreboding  discomfiture 
and  mischief.  They  feared  that  we  should  suffer  the 
worst  of  the  strife,  and  that  the  sort  of  government  we 
should  be  likely  to  have  as  the  alternative  of  a  mon- 
archy would  probably  make  us  largely  the  losers.  Yet 
the  utterance  of  such  views,  if  only  as  misgivings,  might 
in  many  places  be  equally  impolitic  and  dangerous. 

As  has  been  already  said,  there  is  no  record,  or  even 
tradition,  of  unwise  or  unfriendly  expressions  dropped 
by  Mr.  Thompson  which  could  be  used  against  him 
even  when  he  challenged  proof  of  his  alleged  disaffec- 
tion to  the  cause  of  his  country.  However,  he  was 
young,  and  he  had  an  independent  spirit.  His  military 
promotion  by  pure  favoritism,  and,  what  he  insisted  was 
simply  an  act  of  humanity,  his  seeking  immunity  for 
two  returning  deserters,  were  enough  in  themselves  to 
assure  him  jealous  enemies.  But  silence  and  neutrality 
were  then  as  hazardous  as  speech  or  opposition  di- 
rected against  the  popular  enthusiasm.  He  therefore 
became  a  suspected  person  in  Concord,  where  there 
were  watching  enemies  and  tale-bearers,  as  well  as  jeal- 
ous Committees,  who  soon  brought  their  functions  to 
bear  in  a  most  searching  and  offensive  way  against  all 
who  did  not  attend  the  popular  assemblies.  It  was  as 
well  known  as  it  was  observable  that  Thompson  took 
no  part  in  these.  What  more  he  did  or  said,  or  failed 
of  doing  or  saying,  must  be  left,  as  before  remarked,  to 
conjecture.  Yet  it  must  have  been  something  which 
irritated  or  displeased,  something  which  could  be  turned 
into  the  material  for  exciting  a  mob,  with  the  risk  of 
rude,  if  not  violent,  treatment,  exhibited  at  the  time  in 
the  favorite  process  of  tarring  and  feathering  a  politi- 
cally obnoxious  person.  Thompson's  family  connec- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  63 

tions,  beginning  with  the  minister  and  the  squire  of  the 
town,  were,  of  course,  the  most  powerful  set  among 
the  inhabitants  ;  and  if  they  were  unable  to  vindicate 
him  and  protect  him  from  outrage,  and  if  even  his 
brother-in-law  and  other  friends  advised  him  to  quit 
the  place,  —  though  he  did  not  seek  counsel  from  his 
venerated  father-in-law,  —  we  may  well  infer  that  his 
apprehensions  were  not  vain,  whatever  his  own  con- 
sciousness of  rectitude. 

There  was  something  exceedingly  humiliating  and 
degrading  to  a  man  of  an  independent  and  self-respect- 
ing spirit  in  the  conditions  imposed  at  times  by  the 
"  Sons  of  Liberty,"  in  the  process  of  clearing  himself 
from  the  taint  of  Toryism.  The  Committees  of  Corre- 
spondence and  of  Safety,  whose  services  stand  glorified 
to  us  through  their  most  efficient  agency  in  a  successful 
struggle,  delegated  their  authority  to  every  witness  or 
agent  who  might  be  a  self-constituted  guardian  of  patri- 
otic interests,  or  a  spy  or  an  eaves-dropper,  to  catch 
reports  of  suspected  persons.  A  case  transpired  in  Mr. 
Thompson's  neighborhood  of  which  he  doubtless  had 
knowledge.  The  British  troops  in  Boston  being  with- 
out barracks,  and  the  carpenters  of  that  and  the  sur- 
rounding towns  being  -unwilling  to  build  them,  Gov- 
ernor Gage  had  applied  to  Governor  Wentworth  to 
send  him  workmen  from  New  Hampshire  for  that 
service.  The  latter  engaged  secret  agents  to  execute 
this  commission.  But  the  story  leaked  out,  and  the 
Committee  of  Ways  and  Means  at  Portsmouth  took 
up  the  matter  vigorously,  and  so  thoroughly  searched  it 
as  to  discover  one  of  the  Governor's  secret  agents  in 
this  business,  Nicholas  Austin.  The  "  Sons  of  Lib- 
erty "  summoned  the  delinquent  before  them  on  the 


64  Life  of  Count'  Rumf or d. 

8th  of  November,  1774,  and  compelled  him  to  make', 
on  Jiis  knees,  the  following  confession  :  — 

"  Before  this  company  I  confess  I  have  been  aiding  and 
assisting  in  sending  men  to  Boston  to  build  Barracks  for  the 
soldiers  to  live  in,  at  which  you  have  reason  justly  to  be  of- 
fended, which  I  am  sorry  for,  and  humbly  ask  your  forgivness  ; 
and  I  do  affirm,  that  for  the  future  I  never  will  be  acting  or 
assisting  in  any  wise  whatever,  in  Act  or  Deed,  contrary  to  the 
Constitution  of  the  Country  ;  as  witness  my  hand. 

"  NICHOLAS  AUSTIN."  * 

Benjamin  Thompson  was  not  the  man  to  subject 
himself  to  any  such  humiliating  treatment.  He,  how- 
ever, knew  very  well,  that  the  military  commission  which 
he  had  received  —  though,  it  is  said,  without  his  having 
asked  for  it  —  from  the  partiality  of  Governor  Went- 
worth,  while  it  had  provoked  the  enmity  of  older  men 
who  had  real  claims  for  military  promotion,  had  also 
led  him  to  be  classed  with  the  partisans  of  that  magis- 
trate just  as  the  popular  feeling  was  most  inflamed 
against  him.  He  had  occasion  to  fear  any  indignity 
which  an  excited  and  reckless  country  mob,  directed  by 
a  secret  instigation,  might  see  fit  to  inflict  upon  him, 
whether  it  were  by  arraying  him  in  tar  and  feathers,  or 
by  riding  him  upon  a  rail  to  be  jeered  at  by  his  former 
school-pupils.  The  actual  and  visible  agents  in  inflict- 
ing such  degrading  insults  were  not  generally  the  neigh- 
bors and  former  companions  of  an  obnoxious  person, 
but  were  such  volunteers,  whether  in  their  own  proper 
garb  or  disguised  as  Indians,  as  were  easily  rallied 
from  adjoining  towns.  If  %ill-usage  stopped  short  of 
these  extremes,  the  condition  of  escape  and  security 
was,  as  has  been  given  in  the  case  of  Austin,  a  public 

*  New  Hampshire  Gazette,  Portsmouth,  November  II,  1774. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  65 

recantation,  unequivocally  and  strongly  expressed,  in- 
volving a  confession  of  some  act  or  word  in  opposition 
to  the  will  of  the  popular  party,  and  a  solemn  pledge 
of  future  uncompromising  fidelity  to  it.  Major  Thomp- 
son insisted  from  the  first,  and  steadfastly  to  the  close 
of  his  life  affirmed,  that  he  was  friendly  to  the  patriot 
cause,  and  had  never  done  or  said  anything  which  could 
be  truthfully  alleged  as  hostile  to  it.  He  demanded, 
first  in  private,  and  then  in  public,  that  his  enemies 
should  confront  him  with  any  charges  which  they  could 
bring  against  him,  and  he  promised  to  meet  them,  while 
he  also  offered  to  render  any  service  for  which  he  was  fit- 
ted in  the  popular  interest.  He  resolved,  however,  that 
he  would  not  plead  except  against  explicit  charges,  nor 
invite  indignity  by  self-humiliation.  We  must  draw 
our  own  inferences  here,  whether  by  convincing  our- 
selves that  the  popular  distrust  of  him  was  unerring  in 
its  discernment  and  surmise,  and  had  good  reason  on 
its  side,  or  that  he  was  the  innocent  sufferer  from  un- 
toward circumstances.  If  the  people  of  Concord  and 
the  jealous  regimental  officers  of  New  Hampshire  were 
responsible  for  depriving  the  patriot  cause  of  an  effec- 
tive military  or  executive  servant,  they  may  claim 
credit  for  furnishing  Europe  with  a  very  eminent  and 
practically  useful  philosopher. 

Major  Thompson  was  summoned  before  a  Committee 
of  the  people  in  Concord,  in  the  summer  of  1774,  to 
answer  to  the  suspicion  of  "being  unfriendly  to  the 
cause  of  Liberty."  He  positively  denied  the  charge, 
and  boldly  challenged  proof.  The  evidence,  if  any 
such  was  offered,  —  and  no  trace  of  testimony,  or  even 
of  imputation,  of  that  kind  is  on  record, — was  not  of  a 
sort  to  warrant  any  proceeding,  against  him,  and  he  was 
5 


66  Life  of  Count  Rtimford. 

discharged.  This  discharge,  however,  though  nominally 
an  acquittal,  was  not.  effective  in  relieving  him  from 
popular  distrust  and  in  assuring  for  him  confidence. 
Probably  his  own  backwardness  to  avow  sympathy  and 
make  professions  in  accordance  with  the  wishes  of  his 
enemies  left  him  still  under  a  cloud.  A  measure  less 
formal  and  more  threatening  than  the  examination  be- 
fore a  self-constituted  tribunal  was,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  secretly  planned  by  the  excited  people.  This 
was  a  visit  to  his  comfortable  home,  the  most  con- 
spicuous residence  in  the  village.  It  was  carried  into 
effect  in  November,  1774.  A  mob  gathered,  at  the 
time  agreed  on,  around  this  dwelling,  and  after  a  sere- 
nade of  hisses,  hootings,  and  groans,  demanded  that 
Major  Thompson  should  come  out  before  them.  The 
feeling  must  have  been  intense,  and  was  of  a  nature  to 
feed  its  own  flame.  Had  Thompson  been  within,  he 
would  inevitably  have  met  with  foul  handling.  The 
suspicion  that  he  was  hiding  there  would  have  led  to 
the  sacking  of  his  dwelling  and  the  destruction  of  his 
goods,  though  the  daughter  of  their  venerated  minister 
was  its  mistress,  and  she  was  the  mother,  not  only  of 
Thompson's  infant,  but  of  the  only  child  of  their 
former  most  distinguished  townsman,  Colonel  Benjamin 
Rolfe.  Mrs.  Thompson  and  her  brother,  Colonel 
Walker,  came  forth,  and  with  their  assurance  that  her 
husband  was  not  in  the  town,  the  mob  quietly  dispersed. 
Having  received  a  friendly  warning  that  this  assault 
was  to  be  made  upon  him  in  the  shape  of  an  inquisi- 
torial .visit  at  his  house,  and  taking  the  advice  to  which 
reference  has  been  made,  Mr.  Thompson  had  secretly 
left  Concord  just  before.  He  thought  it  was  to  be  only 
a  temporary  separation  from  the  place,  from  all  his 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  67 

friends  there,  from  his  wife  and  his  infant  child.  He 
was  never  to  see  that  pleasant  home  again,  nor  any  one  of 
those  whom  he  left  there,  except  that  he  had  a  brief  and 
troubled  visit  from  his  wife  and  infant,  and  met  the  latter 
again  only  after  an  interval  of  twenty-two  years.  He  was 
himself,  when  he  fled,  midway  in  his  twenty-second  year. 
He  had  made  a  hasty  effort  to  collect  some  dues  which 
belonged  strictly  to  himself,  but  he  scrupulously  avoided 
taking  with  him  anything  that  belonged  to  others,  or 
even  to  his  wife.  What  of  his  own  he  left  there  we  shall 
see  was  soon  subjected  to  the  process  of  confiscation. 

Thompson  at  first  sought  refuge  in  his  former  home 
at  Woburn,  with  his  mother,  in  the  house  to  which  she 
had  moved  with  her  second  husband,  opposite  the  Bald- 
win Mansion,  —  a  security  to  which,  as  we  shall  find,  he 
was  to  be  indebted  for  another  release  from  the  dealing 
of  a  mob.  Here,  for  a  short  time,  he  sought  to  occupy 
himself  in  quiet  retirement  with  his  favorite  pursuits  of 
philosophical  study  and  experiment,  especially  on  the 
properties  of  gunpowder.  But  popular  suspicion  found 
means  to  visit  its  odium  upon  him  here,  and  he  was 
kept  in  a  continual  state  of  anxiety.  Seeking  a  new 
place  of  refuge,  he  found  temporary  shelter  in  Charles^ 
town,  with  a  friend,  nine  miles  from  Woburn  and  one 
from  Boston,  —  divided  from  the  latter  place,  with  which 
he  could  easily  hold  intercourse,  only  by  a  river.  This 
position,  when  it  became  known,  was  not  likely  to 
reassure  confidence  in  him.  (See  Appendix.) 

While  in  Charlestown,  Major  Thompson  addressed 
the  following  letter  to  his  father-in-law,  at  Concord. 

"  December  24th,  1774. 

"REVEREND  SIR, — The  time  and  circumstances  of  my  leav- 
ing the  town  of  Concord  have,  no  doubt,  given  you  great  un- 


I 
68  Life  of  Count  R&mford. 

easiness,  for  which  I  am  extremely  sorry.  Nothing  short  of  the 
most  threatening  danger  could  have  induced  me  to  leave  my 
friends  and  family ;  but  when  I  learned  from  persons  of  un- 
doubted veracity,  and  those  whose  friendship  I  could  not  sus- 
pect, that  my  situation  was  reduced  to  this  dreadful  extremity, 
'I  thought  it  absolutely  necessary  to  abscond  for  a  while,  and 
seek  a  friendly  asylum  in  some  distant  part. 

"  Fear  of  miscarriage  prevents  my  giving  a  more  particular 
account  of  this  affair  ;  but  this  you  may  rely  and  depend  upon, 
that  I  never  did,  nor  (let  my  treatment  be  what  it  will)  ever  will 
do,  any  action  that  may  have  the  most  distant  tendency  to  injure 
the  true  interest  of  this  my  native  country. 

"  I  most  humbly  beg  your  kind  care  of  my  distressed  family  ; 
and  I  hope  you  will  take  an  opportunity  to  alleviate  their  trouble 
by  assuring  them  that  I  am  in  a  place  of  safety,  and  hope 
shortly  to  have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  them.  I  also  most  hum- 
bly beseech  your  prayers  for  me,  that  under  all  my  difficulties 
and  troubles  I  may  behave  in  such  a  manner  as  to  approve 
myself  a  true  servant  of  God  and  a  sincere  friend  of  my 
country. 

"  To  have  tarried  at  Concord  and  have  stood  another  trial  at 
the  bar  of  the  populace  would  doubtless  have  been  attended  with 
unhappy  consequences,  as  my  innocence  would  have  stood  me 
in  no  stead  against  the  prejudices  of  an  enraged,  infatuated 
multitude,  —  and  much  less  against  the  determined  villany  of 
my  inveterate  enemies,  who  strive  to  raise  their  popularity  on 
the  ruins  of  my  character.  My  friends  would  have  been  deemed 
unfriendly  to  the  cause  of  Liberty,  and  my  defence  would  have 
been  treated  with  contempt  and  disdain.  It  would  have  been 
vain  for  me'  to  have  pretended  to  curb  the  fury  or  calm  the 
rage  of  this  popular  whirlwind  ;  but  I  must  have  been  cast,  and 
condemned  to  suffer  punishments  equal  to  the  blackness  of  my 
supposed  transgressions. 

"  The  plan  against  me  was  deeply  laid,  and  the  people  of 
Concord  were  not  the  only  ones  that  were  engaged  in  it.  But 
others  to  the  distance  of  twenty  miles  were  extremely  officious 
on  this  occasion.  My  persecution  was  determined  on,  and 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  69 

my  flight  unavoidable.  And  had  I  not  taken  the  opportunity  to 
leave  the  town  the  moment  I  did,  another  morning  had  effectu- 
ally cut  off  my  retreat." 

There'  is  a  tradition,  which  I  have  not  been  able  to 
authenticate,  that  either  at  this  time  or  nearly  a  year 
afterwards,  while  Thompson  was  concealed  in  some 
friendly  refuge  in  Boston,  he  received  a  visit  from  his 
father-in-law,  who  urgently  appealed  to  him  to  return 
to  his  home.  There  is  no  evidence  within  my  reach 
that  the  two  ever  met  again.  But  on  the  ^th  of  Janu- 
ary following  the  date  of  the  above  letter,  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Walker  addressed  him  a  reply,  the  tenor  of  which  we 
know  only  from  the  response  which  it  drew  from  his 
son-in-law.  The  relations  of  the  latter  were  becoming 
more  and  more  embarrassing,  on  account  of  his  visits  to 
Boston  and  the  intimacy  which  he  appeared  to  seek 
with  the  British  officers  ;  though,  as  there  had  not  yet 
been  any  decisive  outbreak,  he  might  have  expected 
that  the  rupture  would  be  averted.  Mr.  Walker  had 
urged  his  return  to  Concord,  and  had  coupled  with  the 
appeal  a  suggestion  that  he  should  be  prepared,  in  doing 
so,  to  make  some  sort  of  recognition  of  the  grounds 
under  which  his  patriotism  had  been  doubted  and  his 
conduct  brought  under  suspicion.  We  may  infer  from 
this  advice,  that  the  wise  and  esteemed  minister  had  mis- 
givings, at  least,  about  the  discretion  of  his  son-in-law ; 
and  from  the  answer  written  by  the  latter  we  may  also 
infer,  that,  regarding  the  advice  as  proposing  a  confes- 
sion or  recantation,  he  was  determined  to  stand  on  his 
dignity  or  his  sense  of  perfect  innocence,  and  refuse  to 
make  it.  He  might  have  shrunk  from  the  full  de- 
mands of  truth,  or  he  might  have  feared  the  risk  of 
hypocrisy.  His  answer  was  as  follows:  — 


7o  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"BOSTON,  Jan'y  nth,  1775. 

"  HON?  SIR, —  Last  evening  I  had  the  pleasure  to  receive 
your  kind  Letter  of  the  Qth  instant,  for  which  I  return  many 
thanks. 

"  As  to  my  return  to  Concord,  it  is  what  I  most  ardently 
desire  and  wish  for,  could  I  do  it  with  safety.  But  in  the  pres- 
ent distracted  state  of  affairs,  I  fear  I  could  have  no  security 
that  might  be  depended  on,  especially  if  things  should  proceed 
to  such  extremities  as  they  at  present  bid  fair  to  do.  And  as  to 
any  concessions  that  I  could  make,  I  fear  it  would  be  of  no 
consequence,  for  I  cannot,  possibly,  with  a  clear  conscience, 
confess  myself  Guilty  of  doing  anything  to  the  disadvantage  of 
this  Country,  but  quite  the  reverse. 

"  As  to  Mrs.  Thompson's  coming  to  live  with  me,  I  appre- 
hend that  it  will  be  so  far  from  embarrassing  my  affairs,  that  it 
will  lessen  my  expenses,  — as  Mrs.  Clark  will  let  us  have  house- 
room  sufficient  for  our  small  family  for  a  very  trifle,  and  we  can 
live  upon  our  own  provisions,  which  can  easily  be  brought  from 
Concord  in  a  sled  ;  and  as  to  wood,  I  have  enough  of  that  en 
land  of  my  own,  which  my  Father  Pierce  will  transport  for  me 
on  easy  terms. 

"  And  .as  Mrs.  Thompson's  Company  is  almost  the  only 
thing  that  can  be  any  alleviation  of  my  present  troubles,  and  as 
my  being  absent  from  her  is  the  greatest  unhappiness  of  my 
present  situation,  I  hope  I  shall  be  so  happy  as  to  obtain  your 
consent  for  her  leaving  Concord." 

In  compliance  with  this  earnest  appeal,  his  wife,  with 
her  infant,  joined  him  at  his  mother's  home  in  Woburn, 
though  it  required  of  them  a  ride  of  more  than  fifty 
miles  in  midwinter.  They  remained  with  him  till  the 
last  of  May,  1775,  after  which  he  never  again  saw  his 
wife.  My  friend,  Mr.  George  Rumford  Baldwin,  the 
only  surviving  son  of  Colonel  Baldwin,  informs  me  that 
he  has  been  told  that,  at  the  time,  Major  Thompson 
was  mostly  with  the  army  at  Cambridge,  —  though  I 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  71 

think  it  must  have  been  at  an  earlier  time,  probably 
in  March,  1775,  —  while  he  was  at  his  mother  Pierce's 
house  in  New  Bridge  Village,  Woburn,  a  military  com- 
pany, perhaps  a  body  of  practising  min,ute-men,  came 
to  arrest  him  when  he  was  temporarily  confined  by 
illness.  His  friend,  Colonel  Baldwin,  whose  mansion 
was  opposite,  seeing  the  men  halt,  at  once  suspected 
their  object,  and  determined  to  try  to  protect  Thomp- 
son. He  made  a  speech  to  the  company,  saying  that 
he  well  knew  his  friend's  principles  and  feelings,  and 
that  he  was  not  inimical  to  the  American  cause,  but 
might  have  appeared  so  in  consequence  of  having  been 
disappointed  of  the  promotion  he  desired.  After  plead- 
ing in  behalf  of  Thompson  to  the  extent  of  his  ability, 
he  remarked  to  the  men  that  they  must  be  greatly 
fatigued  by  their  march,  and  that  he  would  be  much 
gratified  if  they  would  cross  over  to  his  barn,  (which 
was  the  nearest  building,  and  opposite  the  Pierce 
house),  and  that  he  would  then  bring  out  what  he 
might  have  for  their  refreshment.  They  accepted  the 
invitation,  and  were  so  generously  treated  with  food  and 
liquor  that  their  errand  was  overlooked,  and  they  re- 
turned without  molesting  Thompson,  though  they  had 
previously  twice  sent  in  their  summons  that  he  should 
present  himself,  whether  sick  or  well. 

Whether  this  incident  transpired  at  the  earlier  or  the 
later  date,  it  shows  that  Major  Thompson  had  not 
overcome  the  animosity  against  him.  While  his  wife 
and  child  were  with  him  the  skirmishes  at  Concord, 
Massachusetts,  and  Lexington  occurred,  in  which  it 
has  been  said,  on  what  authority  I  cannot  learn,  that 
Thompson  bore  arms  with  the  Massachusetts  yeomen 
in  resisting  the  British  inroad. 


72  Life  of  Count  Rumford* 

We  have  another  letter  which  was  sent  to  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Walker  while  his  daughter  was  still  with  her  hus- 
band. 

"  WOBURN,  May  nth,  1775. 

"REV?  SIR, —  Since  Mrs.  Thompson  has  been  at  Woburn 
she  has  been  very  unwell,  which  has  prevented  her  coming  to 
Concord  this  week  as  was  proposed.  But  as  soon  as  she  gets 
well  enough  she  will  set  out.  As  to  my  returning  to  Concord, 
it  is  what  I  have  most  earnestly  desired  ever  since  I  left  home, 
and  nothing  but  a  sense  of  danger  has  prevented  my  doing  it 
long  ago.  And  now  the  advice  I  receive  from  different  people, 
who  appear  equally  to  be  my  friends,  relative  to  my  going  back, 
is  so  intirely  different  that  I  scarcely  know  what  to  do  or  what 
course  to  take.  If  I  can  be  assured  of  safety  and  restored  to 
that  friendship  and  esteem  of  my  fellow  Countrymen  which  I 
trust  no  action  of  mine  has  ever  forfeited,  I  will,  with  the  great- 
est pleasure  and  alacrity,  return  to  Concord ;  and  the  good  Peo- 
ple of  that  Town  in  particular,  and  of  the  Country  in  general, 
may  rely  on  my  best  endeavours  to  serve  them.  And  if  ever  I 
have  done  anything  which  in  the  event  has  turned  out  to  the 
damage  of  this  Country,  I  am  sincerely  and  heartily  sorry  there- 
for. But  as  to  confessing  myself  guilty  of  doing  anything  with 
a  design  to  injure  them,  it  is  what  I  can  never  do  without  doing 
violence  to  my  Conscience  and  committing  a  crime  in  reality 
which  I  do  not  choose  to  be  guilty  of. 

"  I  have  not  a  single  doubt  of  your  sincere  friendship  and 
affection  for  me,  and  believe  you  would  not  on  any  account 
advise  me  to  anything  contrary  to  my  safety  and  interest.  Bi;t 
many  Persons  from  Concord  tell  me  that  neither  you  nor  ycur 
son  are  so  well  acquainted  with  the  minds  of  the  People  respect- 
ing myself  as  many  others,  and  advise  me  by  no  means  to  re- 
turn at  present.  Among  these  are  Col.  Stickney  and  Cap*. 
Chandler. 

"  To  return  to  Concord  and  be  kept  a  Prisoner  in  the  Town, 
or  to  be  treated  with  coldness  and  indifference  for  crimes  which 
I  feel  myself  intirely  innocent  of,  would  be  to  me  even  worse 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  73 

• 

than  my  present  situation.      But  if  the  People  of  Concord  will 
be  so  kind  as  to  assure  "     [The  rest  is  wanting.] 

Soon  after  writing  this  letter.  Major  Thompson  was 
arrested  and  confined  in  Woburn.  It  has  been  said 
that  he  himself  courted  this  proceeding  as  the  only 
means  likely  to  result  in  securing  him  a  fair  decision  of 
his  case. 

There  appears  among  Colonel  Baldwin's  papers  a 
document  which  is  here  copied. 

"  WOBURN,  May  i6th,  1775. 

"  GENTLEMEN,  —  Major  Benjamin  Thompson  of  Concord, 
in  the  Province  of  New  Hampshire,  having  been  taken  up  and 
confined  in  the  Town  upon  suspicion  of  being  inimical  to  the 
liberties  of  this  Country,  and  his  Excellency  General  Ward 
having  ordered,  agreeable  to  advice  of  Congress,  that  the  Com- 
mittee of  Correspondence  for  this  Town  be  a  Court  to  inquire 
into  that  Matter  : 

"  This  is  therefore  to  desire  that  all  persons  under  your  com- 
mand, or  otherwise  belonging  to  the  Province  of  New  Hamp- 
shire, or  elsewhere,  that  can  give  evidence  in  this  affair,  may 
appear  at  the  Meeting-house  in  the  first  Parish  in  Woburn,  on 
Thursday,  the  i8th  inst.  May,  at  Two  o'clock,  P.  M.,  and 
they  shall  be  heard. 

"  We  are,  Gentlemen,  Your  Humble  Servants, 
"  To  COL.  JOHN  STARK,  SAMUEL  WYMAN, 

LT.  COL.  WYMAN,  ROBERT  DOUGLAS, 

MAJOR  ANDREW  McCLARY,  DR.  SAMUEL  BLOGGET, 

CAPT.  ABBOT  HUTCHINS,  LOAMMI  BALDWIN, 

CHANDLER  BALDWIN,  TIMOTHY  WINN. 

GERRISH  AND  CLOUGH, 
of  New  Hampshire. 

The  above-named  "  Committee  of  Correspondence  " 
had  been  chosen  at  a  town  meeting,  February  i,  1773. 
At  a  meeting  on  January  4,  1775,  twenty-one  men  had 
been  chosen  as  a  "Committee  of  Inspection,"  and  on 


Comttee 

of 

Corre- 
spon." 


74  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 


April  17,  1775,  a  b°dy  °f  ^%  "  minute-men  "  had 
been  provided  for.  Thus  watchful  was  the  oversight 
of  suspected  persons  and  the  cause  of  Liberty. 

It  seemed  as  if  the  worried  man  were  now  in  a  fair 
way  to  obtain  a  hearing. 

In  Colonel  Baldwin's  Diary,  under  date  of  May  18, 
1775,  '1S  tne  following  entry  :  — 

"  Thursday  in  afternoon  went  to  Woburn  to  sit  as  one  of  a 
Committee  of  Correspondence  upon  Major  Thompson,  who 
was  taken  up  as  a  Tory,  but,  finding  nothing  against  him,  ad- 
journed till  next  Monday." 

And  the  following  occurs  in  another  place,  which  seems 
to  refer  to  the  same  occasion  as  it  is  of  the  same  date  :  — 

"  At  a  Court  of  Inquiry  into  the  conduct  of  Major  Thomp- 
son of  Concord,  New  Hampshire,  convened  at  the  Meeting- 
House  of  the  First  Parish  in  Woburn,  on  Thursday,  the  i8th 
of  May,  1775,  at  2  o'clock,  by  the  Committee  of  Correspond- 
ence of  said  Town." 

Until  after  the  affair  at  Concord  and  Lexington, 
while  it  was  evident  that  matters  were  coming  to  a 
crisis,  intercourse  between  Boston  and  the  adjoining 
country  was  substantially  open,  though  the  capital  was 
under  military  rule,  and  the  yeomen  of  the  neighboring 
towns,  organized  as  minute-men,  were  on  the  watch 
night  and  day  for  alarms.  But  after  the  British  troops 
had  returned  from  their  inroad,  entrance  to  Boston  or 
exit  from  it  was  attended  with  difficulty.  General  Gage, 
who  had  himself  married  an  American  lady,  and  was  the 
owner  of  land  here,  appears  to  have  thought,  till  he  was 
recalled  to  England,  that  the  quarrel  between  the  colo- 
nies and  the  mother  country  might  yet  be  adjusted; 
and  it  seems  plain  that  Major  Thompson,  on  his  visits 
to  Boston,  felt  the  influence  of  the  General  upon  him- 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  75 

self.  But  with  predilections,  as  he  still  insisted,  for  the 
cause  of  his  native  country,  he  determined  to  make  an 
effort  to  obtain  a  hearing  before  the  Committee  of  the 
Provincial  Congress  then  sitting  at  Watertown,  which 
exercised  the  functions  of  government.  He  therefore 
addressed  the  following  letter  to  his  friend  Baldwin. 

"WOBURN,  1 9th  May,  1775. 

"DEAR  SIR, —  The  enclosed  Petition  I  beg  you  would  do 
me  the  honour  to  present  to  the  Committee  of  Safety,  and  ac- 
company it  with  your  influence.  As  my  only  design  is  to  con- 
vince the  world  of  my  innocence,  and  silence  the  clamours  of 
my  enemies,  and  as  I  know  this  method  is  agreeable  to  your 
mind,  I  doubt  not  but  the  prayer  of  the  Petition  will  be  granted. 
But  if  the  Committee  of  Safety  will  not  have  anything  to  do  in 
the  affair,  but  insist  upon  it  that  the  Committee  of  Correspond- 
ence for  the  Town  of  Woburn  shall  make  an  end  of  the  mat- 
ter, yet  I  would  most  earnestly  beg  to  have  Concord  and  the 
adjacent  Towns  have  notice  of  the  time  and  place  of  the  fur- 
ther examination,  in  order  that  this  may  be  a  final  settlement. 
And  if  the  Committee  of  Safety,  or,  otherwise,  the  Committee 
of  Correspondence,  will  make  out  a  proper  notification  for  that 
purpose,  I  will  at  my  own  expense  immediately  forward  it  to 
Concord. 

"  You  cannot  be  insensible  that  my  present  confinement  is 
very  disagreeable,  therefore  I  hope  you  will  endeavour  that  the 
day  of  Trial  may  be  appointed  as  soon  as  may  be  consistent 
with  giving  my  accusers  sufficient  notice  to  appear.  I  am,  Dear 
Sir,  Your  real  friend  and  Humble  Servant, 

"BENJJ-  THOMPSON. 

"P.  S.  —  The  Bearer,  Mr.  Thomas,  comes  to  Cambridge  on 
purpose  to  deliver  this,  and  I  beg  he  may  return  as  soon  as 
possible. 

"  To  MAJOR  LOAMMI  BALDWIN,  Head  Quarters,  Cambridge." 

The  petition  enclosed  to  Mr.  Baldwin  was  as  fol- 
lows : — 


7 6  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  To  the  Honourable  the  Committee  of  Safety  for  the  Colony  of 

Massachusetts  Bay. 

"  The  Petition  of  Benjamin  Thompson,  Esq.,  of  Concord,  in 
the  Province  of  New  Hampshire,  humbly  sheweth  :  — 

"  That  on  Monday,  the  I5th  inst.,  your  petitioner  was  taken 
up  and  confined  in  this  Town,  upon  suspicion  of  being  inimical 
to  the  liberties  of  this  Country  ;  and  that  in  consequence  of  his 
being  taken  up,  the  Committee  of  Correspondence  for  the 
Town,  after  having  given  public  notice  of  the  time  and  place 
of  hearing,  and  desired  all  persons  that  could  give  evidence  to 
attend,  proceeded  to  an  examination  of  the  affair,  agreeable  to 
the  recommendation  of  the  Honourable  Provincial  Congress. 
But  as  no  person  appeared  to  lay  anything  of  consequence  to 
his  charge  ;  and  as  the  Committee  were  not  pleased  either  to 
acquit  or  condemn  him  ;  and  as  his  own  personal  safety,  as  well 
as  the  quiet  and  satisfaction  of  the  public,  but  more  especially 
of  the  people  of  New  Hampshire,  depends  on  his  having  an 
acquittance  after  the  most  public,  thorough,  and  impartial 
examination,  —  your  petitioner  humbly  prays  that  the  Committee 
of  Safety  would  be  pleased  to  take  the  matter  into  consideration, 
and  examine  the  same  ;  and  that  they  would  be  pleased  to  give 
notice  of  the  time  and  place  of  hearing,  not  only  to  the  people 
of  New  Hampshire,  and  others  that  are  in  the  Army  at  Cam- 
bridge, or  elsewhere,  but  also  that  the  public  in  general,  and 
the  inhabitants  of  the  Town  of  Concord,  in  the  Province  of 
New  Hampshire,  and  the  adjacent  Towns  in  particular,  be  de- 
sired to  attend  or  send  in  depositions  of  what  they  know  relative 
to  the  affair. 

"  And  your  petitioner,  as  in  duty  bound,  shall  ever  pray,  &c. 

"BENJ.  THOMPSON. 

"  WOBURN,  May  19,  1775."* 

May  20,  1775,  Colonel  Baldwin  makes  the  follow- 
ing entry  :  — 

"  Saturday,  I  presented  a  Petition  to  the  Committee  of  Safety, 
sent  me  by  Major  Thompson,  and  brought  by  Alexander 

*  Force's  American  Archives,  4th  Series,  Vol.  II.  pp.  647,  648. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  77 

Thomas,  which  Petition  the  Committee  referred  to  the  Con- 
gress, where  we  went  and  sent  it  in  to  them  sitting  at  Water- 
town  Meeting-house.  We  dined  at  Leonard's;  so  the  matter 
was  deferred  for  the  present." 

We  must  remind  ourselves  that  this  was  at  one  of 
the  most  critical  and  anxious  stages  in  the  course  of 
events  which  resulted  in  opening  the  Revolutionary  War. 
Large  bodies  of  minute-men  and  soldiers  from  all  the 
New  England  Provinces  were  gathered  in  Cambridge, 
and  on  the  hills  in  its  neighborhood,  under  the  com- 
mand of  General  Ward.  The  Provincial  Congress  was  in 
session,  overwhelmed  with  business,  as  it  had  assumed 
full  legislative  functions  independently  of  the  control 
of  the  royal  Governor  or  his  subordinates.  The  people 
had  in  their  town  meetings  resolved  to  recognize  the 
authority  of  this  Congress  ancl  to  pay  their  taxes  to  the 
treasurer  appointed  by  it,  while  they  helped  by  other 
popular  measures  to  confirm  and  increase  that  authority. 
The  object  was  to  confine  the  British  forces  to  the 
peninsula  of  Boston,  leaving  them  no  exit  but  by  the 
sea,  and,  if  possible,  to  embarrass  that.  This  made  it 
necessary  to  guard  and  fortify  nearly  a  whole  circle  of 
territory,  extending  round  from  the  heights  of  Dorches- 
ter to  those  of  Chelsea.  Aspirants  for  commissions  in 
the  American  army  were  numerous  and  in  warm  rivalry. 
If  Major  Thompson  were,  as  he  affirmed,  impatient  to 
assume  his  military  office,  or  to  secure  a  higher  one,  we 
can  well  imagine  how  he  must  have  fretted  under  the 
confinement  which  not  only  restrained  his  liberty  and 
subjected  him  to  indignity,  but  also  threatened  to  be  an 
insuperable  obstacle  to  his  attainment  of  his  object.  If 
his  after  course  was  largely  decided  by  resentment  and 
the  sense  of  having  been  outraged,  we  must  look  for  the 


7 8  Life  of  Coztnt  Riimford. 

occasion  of  it    now  and  here.      He    thus    conveys    his 
thanks    to  his  friend. 

"  WOBURN,  May  22,d,  1775. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  am  to  return  you  many  thanks  for  your 
kindness  in  presenting  my  petition  to  the  Committee  of  Safety, 
and  your  further  care  and  trouble  in  laying  it  before  the  Con- 
gress. I  must  intreat  your  further  assistance  in  this  affair,  and 
hope  that  it  will  one  time  or  other  be  in  my  power  to  make  a 
suitable  return  for  all  your  kindness. 

"  Mr.  Thomas  .now  waits  upon  you  to  know  what  the  Con- 
gress are  determined  to  do  respecting  me  ;  and  I  shall  wait  with 
impatience  for  his  return. 

"  I  would  beg  leave  to  congratulate  you  upon  your  promotion 
in  the  Army,  and  I  would  at  the  same  time  congratulate  the 
Public  upon  the  same  ocqasion. 

"I  am,  Sir,  with  real  Regard  and  Esteem, 

"  Your  friend  and  Humble  Servant, 

"BENJ^  THOMPSON. 

"To  COLONEL  BALDWIN,  Head  Quarters,  Cambridge." 

Either  from  pressure  of  business,  or  under  the  per- 
suasion that  Woburn  was  the  proper  place  for  a  hearing 
of  the  cause,  the  Committee  of  the  Provincial  Congress 
did  not  see  fit  to  entertain  Major  Thompson's  petition. 
He  had  further  reason  for  resentment  and  chagrin,  when, 
after  subjecting  himself  to  the  trouble  and  expense  of 
summoning  any  witnesses  who  might  see  fit  to  appear 
against  him,  and  after  securing  a  hearing  of  the  case  in 
his  native  town,  the  result  was  as  dilatory  and  as  un- 
decisive as  the  documents  next  given  will  show. 

u  VFoburn  {Massachusetts)  Committee. 

''  Whereas  the  Committee  of  Correspondence  for  the  Town 
of  Woburn,  authorised  by  the  honourable  Provincial  Congress 
to  examine  into  the  principles  and  conduct  of  any  person  sus- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  79 

pected  of  being  inimical  to  the  liberties  of  this  Country,  have 
examined  Major  Benjamin  Thompson,  of  Concord,  in  the 
Province  of  New  Hampshire,  being  brought  before  them,  sus- 
pected of  being  thus  inimical.  And  whereas  the  said  Com- 
mittee have  summoned  certain  evidences,  who  they  supposed 
could  give  light  into  the  matter,  to  attend,  which  evidences 
failed  of  so  doing  :  This  is  therefore  to  inform  all  persons  who 
are  knowing  to  the  said  Major  Thompson's  conduct,  that  the 
Committee  have  adjourned  to  Monday  the  2Qth  day  of  May 
next,  at  three  o'clock,  afternoon,  at  the  meeting-house,  where 
said  evidences  are  desired  to  attend,  as  the  Committee  think 
themselves  bound  to  dismiss  and  recommend  the  said  Thomp- 
son, unless  something  more  appears  against  him  than  what  they 

have  heard. 

"  SAMUEL  WYMAN,  Chairman. 
•"May  24,  1775."* 

"Massachusetts  Provincial  Congress,  May  25,  1775. 
"  The  Petition  of  Benjamin  Thompson  to  the  Committee  of 
Safety  was  read,  and  ordered  to  subside."  f 

The  action  in  the  town  of  Woburn  on  the  hearing  of 
the  case,  as  preserved  in  a  record  in  Colonel  Baldwin's 
papers,  is  thus  related  :  — 

"  Major  Benjamin  Thompson  of  Concord,  in  the  Province 
of  New  Hampshire,  having  been  taken  up  and  confined  in  this 
Town  upon  suspicion  of  being  inimical  to  the  liberties  of  this 
Country :  And  we,  the  Committee  of  Correspondence  for  the 
Town  of  Woburn,  (being  duly  authorised  by  a  vote  of  the  Hon. 
Provincial  Congress  to  hear  and  Determine  upon  this  matter,) 
after  having  given  public  notice  of  the  time  and  place  of  exr 
amination,  and  desired  all  persons  that  could  give  evidence 
respecting  that  affair  to  attend  ;  and  after  having  strictly  and 
impartially  examined  into  the  affair,  do  not  find  that  said  Thomp- 
son in  .any  one  instance  has  shown  a  Disposition  unfriendly  to 
American  Liberty  :  But  that  his  general  behaviour  has  evinced 

*  Force's  American  Archives,  4th  Series,  Vol.  II.  p.  701.  f  Idem,  p.  815. 


8o  Life  of  Count  Rumford* 

the  direct  contrary  :  And  as  he  has  now  given  us  the  strongest 
assurances  of  his  good  intentions,  we  recommend  him  to  the 
Friendship,  Confidence,  and  Protection  of  all  good  People  in 
this  and  the  neighboring  Provinces —  Colonies. 

"  WOBURN,  in  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  zgth  May,  1775." 

The  meeting-house  was  crowded  on  the  occasion,  and 
the  accused  pleaded  his  own  cause  and  managed  his  own 
defence.  There  does  not  appear  to  have  been  any 
examination  of  witnesses.  Such  reports,  surmises,  or 
charges  as  any  one  present  chose  to  repeat  or  suggest 
personally  or  through  hints  to  the  Committee  were 
met  by  Thompson,  and  by  him  ascribed  to  envy  or 
jealousy.  It  has  been  said  by  one  who  has  argued  in  his 
cause,*  that,  though  the  Committee  reached  this  favora- 
ble decision,  they  refused  to  secure  him  a  public  acquit- 
tal, the  reason  assigned  being,  that  if  they  gave  a  copy 
of  their  proceedings  to  Thompson  for  publication,  it 
would  offend  his  opponents,  as  seeming  to  condemn 
them.  He  adds  that  Thompson's  feelings  were  greatly 
exasperated  at  this  injustice. 

The  statement  hardly  seems  probable.  A  result 
reached  and  announced  in  a  thronged  meeting  in  a 
village  church,  after  such  a  deliberate  hearing,  could 
hardly  be  prevented  from  becoming  matter  of  notoriety. 
Yet  Thompson  himself  complains,  as  we  shall  see  in 
another  letter  to  Mr.  Walker,  of  injustice  from  the 
Committee.  The  inference  drawn  by  Mr.  Johnston  is, 
that  the  above  vindication  of  Thompson  was  written  by 
one  of  the  Committee,  but  was  not  allowed,  as  the 
accused  desired,  to  be  communicated  to  the  public 
He  says  that  as  a  postscript  to  the  original  report  of 
the  Committee  of  Vigilance  is  added  what  follows  :  — 

*  John  Johnston.     See  note  on  p.  n. 


Life  of  Co^mt  Rumford.  81 

"  This  may  certify  that  when  Major  Thompson  was  examined 
before  the  Committee  of  Correspondence  for  the  town  of  Wo- 
burn,  (being  brought  before  them  on  suspicion  of  being  inimical 
to  American  liberties,)  the  affair  of  the  return  of  four  deserters 
from  Concord,  in  New  Hampshire,  to  Boston,  in  which  said 
Thompson  was  supposed  to  be  instrumental,  and  also  his  con- 
duct relative  to  the  Concord  donation,  —  sending  a  load  of  peas 
to  Boston,  —  and  an  undue  connection  or  correspondence  with 
Gov.  Wentworth,  were  matters  which  were  laid  to  his  charge 
against  him,  which  were  thoroughly  examined  into,  and  in  every 
particular  the  Committee  received  full  satisfaction  from  said 
Thompson." 

If  this  favorable  but  suppressed  judgment  on  his 
case  was  indeed  only  the  unsuccessful  verdict  of  a  friend 
present  at  the  examination,  we  may  well  conclude  that 
that  friend  was  "Baldwin.  Himself  a  man  of  thorough 
sincerity  and  rectitude  and  a  warm  patriot,  his  cham- 
pionship is  Thompson's  best  vindication. 

The  sense  of  a  wrong  which  was  becoming  too  aggra- 
vating for  longer  patient  endurance  expresses  itself  in 
this  request  of  Thompson  to  his  friend. 

"CAMBRIDGE,  May  30,  1775. 

"  SIR,  —  I  should  take  it  as  a  great  favour  if  you  would  apply 
to  the  Honourable  Provincial  Congress,  and  withdraw  a  Petition 
which  I  preferred  to  the  Honb!e  the  Committee  of  Safety,  on 
the  iQth  of  May  inst.,  through  your  hands. 

BENJ^  THOMPSON. 
"  MAJOR  LOAMMI  BALDWIN." 

Major  Thompson  was  after  this  released  from  con- 
finement, and  of  course  left  free  to  go  where  he  would, 
at  the  risk,  of  meeting  still  unappeased  enemies,  and 
suffering  such  treatment  as  any  combination  of  them 
might  visit  upon  him.  That  he  did  not  return  to 
Concord,  New  Hampshire,  and  with  such  credentials 


82  Life  of  Count  Rumford, 

as  he  could  present  for  his  security,  and  a  reasonable 
degree  of  reliance  upon  the  support  of  his  friends, 
attempt  resolutely  to  face  down  his  calumniators,  is  to 
be  referred  to  the  one  or  the  other  of  these  two  reasons. 
Either  he  felt  that  there  was  no  reasonable  hope  that  he 
should  succeed  in  this  courageous  attempt,  and  that 
if  he  were  allowed  to  remain  at  home  it  would  be  as 
a  suspected  person  smarting  under  a  sense  of  wrong,  to 
lead  an  aimless  and  miserable  life  ;  or  else  he  really 
desired  and  expected  that  he  might  yet  obtain  a  place 
of  honor  and  service  in  the  patriot  army.  He  lingered 
about  the  camp.  He  devoted  himself  zealously  to  the 
study  of  military  tactics.  He  continued  his  experi- 
ments on  gunpowder.  He  strolled  between  Woburn, 
Medford,  Cambridge,  and  Charlestown,  learning  what- 
ever his  inquisitive  and  observing  mind  could  appro- 
priate. But  there  was  one  set  of  men  whom  he  never 
could  conciliate,  who  mistrusted  his  purposes  and  cast 
upon  him  lowering  looks  as  they  met  him  about  the 
camp.  These  were  the  general  and  field  officers  from 
New  Hampshire,  who  looked  upon  him  as  a  dandy 
and  an  upstart  at  least,  if  not  also  as  at  heart  a  traitor. 
They  would  not  associate  with  him,  still  less  confide  in 
him. 

Major  Baldwin  records  under  date  of  June  4,  1775  :  — 

"  Sunday,  A.  M.,  went  to  Meeting  :  after  Meeting  at  noon 
went  down  to  see  the  Men-of-War  fire,  &c.  to  Lechmere  Point, 
and  viewed  Boston,  &c.  Major  Thompson  and  Lieut.  Reed 
was  my  company." 

"June  13.  Tuesday,  A  Manifesto  came  out  from  General 
Gage.  We  are  in  expectation  that  the  Troops  will  be  out  soon. 
I  am  poorly  with  a  cold.  Major  Thompson  went  to  Woburn." 

It  was  to  avert  and  oppose  that  expected  sortie  of  the 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  83 

British  troops  from  Boston,  that  on  the  following  Satur- 
day, June  17,  the  fortifications  were  thrown  up  on  the 
heights  of  Charlestown  by  a  detachment  of  New  Eng- 
land soldiers,  sent  from  Cambridge  by  General  Ward, 
just  before  midnight  on  Friday,  resulting  in  the  Battle 
of  Bunker  Hill,  of  which  it  has  been  generally  believed 
that  Major  Thompson  was  at  least  a  spectator. 

As  the  College  buildings  at  Cambridge  were  now 
used  as  barracks,  Colonel  Baldwin  records  on  the  I5th, 
"They  are  beginning  to  remove  the  Library/'  The 
books  were  transported  to  Concord,  Massachusetts, 
some  eighteen  miles  into  the  country.  Major  Thomp- 
son assisted  in  this  labor,  glad  thus  to  recognize  his  ob- 
ligations to  the  College. 

Mr.  Johnston,  above  quoted,  as  writing  from  infor- 
mation communicated  to  him  by  the  son  of  Thomp- 
son's eldest  step-brother,  says  that,  after  the  t>attle  at 
Charlestown,  Thompson  was  favorably  introduced  by 
some  officers  at  Cambridge  to  General  Washington, 
who  had  just  assumed  the  command;  and  that,  had  it 
not  been  for  the  opposition  of  some  of  the  New  Hamp- 
shire officers,  he  would  have  had  the  place  in  the  Ameri- 
can artillery  corps  which  was  given  to  Colonel  Gridley. 

The  following  letter  of  Thompson's  was  found  in  a 
file  of  Colonel  Baldwin's  papers.  Its  probable  date  was 
August,  1775. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  observed  in  the  General  Orders  of  Sunday 
last  that  each  Sargent  and  Corporal  in  the  Army  was  to  wear 
an  Epaulet  to  distinguish  them  from  the  Commissioned  Officers 
and  from  the  private  soldiers.  I  herewith  send  you  samples  of 
some  which  I  apprehend  will  answer  the  end,  and  if  you  will  be 
so  kind  as  to  get  them  approved  of  by  the  General,  and  engage 
any  considerable  number  for  me,  you  may  depend  on  having 


84  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

them  done  in  the  best  manner  and  with  the  utmost  despatch, 
as  there  is  a  considerable  number  of  Women  here  who  will 
immediately  go  to  work  upon  them.  Whether  it  is  proper  or 
not  to  shew  them  to  General  Washington,  I  leave  to  your 
judgement.  I  apprehend  the  price  ought  to  be  somewhere  about 
I5/,  or  perhaps  as  low  as  13/6,  if  a  large  number  were  engaged. 

"  If  it  shall  be  thought  proper  for  the  Sargent  Majors  to  wear 
one  or  two  red  Silk  Epaulets,  instead  of  a  worsted  one,  I  can 
easily  supply  them. 

"  Please  to  give  my  compliments  to  Col.  Gerrish,  and  present 
him  with  one  of  the  red  cockades  which  the  bearer  will  give 
you  as  a  present  from  his  and  your  much 

Obliged  and  most  Obedient  Servant, 

"BENJAMIN  THOMPSON. 
"  Wednesday  Morning. 

"  To  COL.  BALDWIN,  Camp  before  Boston." 

Only  one  other  letter  written  on  this  side  of  the  ocean 
remains  to  be  given  from  the  pen  of  Benjamin  Thomp- 
son. It  is  impossible  to  read  it  without  emotion.  The 
writer  was  twenty-two  years  of  age,  but  the  letter  has 
the  vigor  of  the  maturest  manliness.  Its  firm  and  bold 
chirography  is  in  keeping  with  its  sentiments  and  with 
the  forcible  language  in  which  they  are  expressed.  It  is 
addressed  to  his  father-in-law.  ' 

"WOBURN,  August  I4th,  1775. 

"  HON?  SIR,  —  I  have  your  favours  of  the  16  and  29  May, 
which  I  should  have  answered  long  since,  but  have  waited  for 
an  opportunity  of  conversing  with  you  Verbally.  But  as  I  see 
no  prospect  of  having  such  a  long-wish'd-for  interview,  I  shall 
trouble  you  with  one  more  of  my  Letters. 

"  I  am  not  so  thoroughly  convinc'd  that  my  leaving  th? 
Town  of  Concord  was  wrong  (considering  the  circumstances  at 
that  time)  as  I  am  that  it  was  wrong  in  me  to  do  it  without 
your  knowledge  or  advice.  This,  Sir,  is  a  step  which  I  always 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  85 

have  repented,  and  for  which  I  am  now  sincerely  ana  heartily 
sorry,  and  ask  your  forgiveness.  What  infatuation  could  induce 
me  to  take  a  step  of  so  much  importance  without  previously 
consulting  you  upon  the  affair,  I  am  at  a  loss  to  imagine.  But 
be  assured,  Sir,  that  tho'  you  was  not  privy  to  my  going  off, 
yet  I  did  not  do  it  without  the  knowledge  and  advice  of  many 
others  whom  I  really  thought  my  friends,  and  among  the  rest 
you  will  give  me  leave  to  name  your  Son  as  the  chief,  who  not 
only  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  it  was  for  the  best,  but  also  fur- 
nished me  with  a  Horse  to  make  my  escape,  and  money  to  the 
amount  of  20  Dollars  to  bear  my  expenses,  and  promised  to  take 
care  of  my  affairs  in  my  absence.  Into  his  hands  I  committed 
all  my  Notes  and  papers  of  consequence  ;  saving  only  a  few 
Notes  to  the  amount  of  about  ^300,  which  I  left  with  Mrs. 
Thompson,  the  chief  of  which,  I  am  informed,  he  has  since 
gotten  into  his  possession. 

"  My  situation  at  that  time  was  peculiarly  critical.  I  knew  I 
had  a  number  of  enemies  in  the  Town  whose  Personal  and 
inveterate  malice  nothing  would  satisfy,  and  found  by  fatal 
experience  that  they  had  it  in  their  power  to  raise  the  cry  of 
the  populace  against  me :  and  to  persuade  them  that  what 
they  laid  to  my  charge  (Viz4-  being  instrumental  in  procuring  a 
pardon  for  some  Deserters)  was  not  only  in  itself  a  crime  of  the 
blackest  dye,  but  that  I  did  it  with  an  express  design  to  injure 
the  Country,  and  assist  in  enslaving  it ;  in  fine,  that  I  was  an 
enemy  to  the  cause  of  America,  and  deserved  the  severest  pun- 
ishments. '  Tis  true  all  did  not  coincide  in  this  opinion,  and  I 
was  peculiarly  happy  in  having  my  Brother  Walker's  approba- 
tion of  my  conduct.  But  notwithstanding  he  thought  me  inno- 
cent, yet  he  dared  not  appear  in  my  behalf ;  he  saw  the  current 
was  against  me,  and  was  afraid  to  interfere. 

"  When  I  was  brought  to  trial,  my  friends  (knowing  in  what 
a  light  my  crime  was  look'd  upon  by  the  populace)  advised  me 
to  plead  not  guilty.  I  did  so,  but  found,  instead  of  quieting  the 
disturbances,  it  only  served  to  heighten  the  clamours  against 
me,  'till  at  length  I  found  it  absolutely  necessary  that  some- 
thing should  be  done  for  my  personal  security.  My  friends  ad- 


86  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

vised  me  to  leave  the  Town  'till  the  storm  should  be  abated, 
which  they  doubted  not  would  be  in  a  short  time.  I  neither 
doubted  the  abilities  nor  scrupled  the  sincerity  of  my  friends, 
and  accordingly  followed  their  advice.  But  the  event  has  not 
proved  equal  to  my  expectations,  for  the  storm,  instead  of  sub- 
siding, has  increased,  and  the  popular  disturbances  have  grown 
into  such  a  flame  as  I  fear  nothing  but  my  blood  will  extin- 
guish. 

."Had  the  People  of  Concord  looked  upon  Banishment  as  a 
punishment  equal  to  my  crimes,  they  would  not  surely  have 
refused  my  very  reasonable  request  for  Liberty  to  pass  to  that 
Town  and  to  repass  to  Cambridge  unmolested,  if  affairs  could 
not  be  amicably  settled  so  that  I  might  live  at  home  in  peace 
and  safety.  I  did  not  claim  any  merit  from  any  examination  I 
had  passed  through  here.  I  did  not  attempt  in  the  least  to 
palliate  those  offences  I  am  charg'd  with  by  mine  enemies,  but 
only  wished  to  meet  my  accusers  on  equal  ground.  And  I 
think  their  refusal  of  this  request  not  only  affords  a  melancholy 
presage  of  what  I  am  to  expect  from  them,  but  will  clearly 
demonstrate  to  the  World  upon  what  principles  these  men  act 
who,  under  pretence  of  'defending  their  Liberties  and  priviledges, 
and  asserting  the  rights  of  mankind,'  are  depriving  individuals  of 
every  idea  of  freedom,  and  are  exercising  a  Tyranny  which  an 
Eastern  Despot  would  blush  to  be  Guilty  of. 

u  As  to  my  being  instrumental  in  the  return  of  some  De- 
serters, by  procuring  them  a  pardon,  I  freely  acknowledge  that  I 
was.  But  you  will  give  me  leave  to  say  that  what  I  did  was 
done  from  principles  the  most  unexceptionable  —  the  most  dis- 
interested —  a  sincere  desire  to  serve  my  King  and  Country,  and 
from  motives  of  Pity  to  those  unfortunate  Wretches  who  had 
deserted  the  service  to  which  they  had  voluntarily  and  so 
solemnly  tyed  themselves,  and  to  which  they  were  desirous  of 
returning.  If  the  designed  ends  were  not  answered  by  what  I 
did,  I  am  sincerely  and  heartily  sorry.  But  if  it  is  a  Crime  to 
act  from  principles  like  these,  I  glory  in  being  a  Criminal. 

u  But  as  to  the  other  '  Known '  and  c  Obnoxious  facts  '  which 
you  mention,  Viz1.  c  maintaining  a  long  and  expensive  corre- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  87 

spondence  with  G r  W th,'  or  ca  suspicious  correspond- 
ence, to  say  the  least,  with  G rs  W th  and  G e,' 

I  would  beg  leave  to  observe,  That  at  the  time  that  Governor 
Wentworth  first  honored  me  with  his  notice,  it  was  at  a  time 
when  he  was  as  high  in  the  esteem  of  his  people  in  general  as 
ever  was  any  Governor  in  America,  —  at  a  time  whea  even  Mr. 
Sullivan  himself  was  proud  to  be  thought  his  friend.  And  as 
from  the  first  commencement  of  our  acquaintance  'till  I  left 
Concord  he  never  did  anything  (to  my  knowledge)  whereby  he 
forfeited  the  affection  and  confidence  of  the  Public,  I  cannot 
see  why  a  correspondence  with  him  should  be  obnoxious  ;  or 
that  the  length  or  expensiveness  of  it  should  be  thought  an  object 
of  public  attention,  —  that  merited  Public  Censure.  'T  is  true, 
Sir,  I  always  thought  myself  honored  by  his  friendship,  and  was 
ever  fond  of  a  correspondence  with  him,  —  a  correspondence 
which  was  purely  private  and  friendly,  and  not  Political,  and  for 
which  I  cannot  find  in  my  Heart  either  to  express  my  sorrow 
or  ask  forgiveness  of  the  Public. 

"As  to  my  maintaining  a  correspondence  with -Governor 
Gage,  this  part  of  the  charge  is  intirely  without  foundation,  as  I 
never  received  a  Letter  from  him  in  my  life  ;  nor  did  I  ever 
write  him  one,  except  about  half  a  dozen  lines  which  I  sent 
him  just  before  I  left  Concord  may  be  calPd  a  Letter,  and 
which  contained  no  intelligence,  nor  anything  of  a  public  nature, 
but  was  only  to  desire  that  the  Soldiers  who  returned  from  Con- 
cord might  be  Ordered  not  to  inform  any  person  by  whose  inter- 
cession their  pardon  was  granted  them. 

"  But  this  is  not  the  only  groundless  charge  that  has  been 
brought  against  me.  Many  other  crimes  which  you  do  not 
mention  have  been  laid  to  my  charge,  for  which  I  have  had 
to  answer  both  publicly  and  privately.  Mine  enemies  are  inde- 
fatigable in  their  indeavours  to  distress  me,  and  I  find  to  my 
sorrow  that  they  are  but  too  successful.  I  have  been  driven 
from  the  Camp  by  the  clamours  of  the  New  Hampshire  People, 
and  am  again  threatened  in  this  place.  But  I  hope  soon  to  be 
out  of  the  reach  of  my  Cruel  Persecutors,  for  I  am  determined 
to  seek  for  that  Peace  and  Protection  in  foreign  Lands  and  among 


8b  Life  of  Count  Ritmford. 

strangers  which  is  deny'd  me  in  my  native  country.  I  cannot 
any  longer  bear  the  insults  that  are  daily  offered  me.  I  cannot 
bear  to  be  looked  upon  and  treated  as  the  Achan  of  Society.  I 
have  done  nothing  that  can  deserve  this  cruel  usage.  I  have 
done  nothing  with  any  design  to  injure  my  countrymen,  and 
cannot  any  longer  bear  to  be  treated  in  this  barbarous  manner 
by  them. 

"  And  notwithstanding  I  have  the  tenderest  regard  for  my 
Wife  and  family,  and  really  believe  I  have  an  equal  return  of 
Love  and  affection  from  them  ;  though  I  feel  the  keenest  dis- 
tress at  the  thoughts  of  what  Mrs.  Thompson  and  my  Parents 
and  friends  will  suffer  on  my  account,  and  though  I  foresee  and 
realize  the  distress,  poverty,  and  wretchedness  that  must  una- 
voidably attend  my  Pilgrimage  in  unknown  lands,  destitute  of 
fortune,  friends,  and  acquaintance,  yet  all  these  Evils  appear  to 
me  more  tolerable  than  the  treatment  which  I  meet  with  from 
the  hands  of  mine  ungrateful  countrymen. 

ct  This  step,  I  am  sensible,  is  violent,  but  my  case  is  desperate. 
I  have  nothing  to  expect  from  mine  Enemies,  and  my  friends 
are  afraid  to  appear  for  me.  And  I  see  no  prospect  of  being 
able  either  to  return  to  Concord,  or  even  to  stay  here  much 
longer  in  peace  and  safety.  A  reconciliation  upon  honorable 
terms  is  of  all  others  the  thing  most  to  be  desired.  But  you 
must  allow  me  to  say,  that  my  present  situation,  notwithstand- 
ing it  is  thus  dreadful,  is  to  be  preferred  to  a  reconciliation  (sup- 
posing it  possible)  upon  the  terms  of  my  making  an  acknowl- 
edgement. The  crime  which  is  alleged  against  me  (Viz1-  being 
an  enemy  to  my  Country)  is  a  crime  of  the  blackest  dye,  —  a 
crime  which  must,  if  proved  against  me,  inevitably  entail  per- 
petual infamy  and  disgrace  upon  my  name.  If  I  confess  myself 
Guilty,  will  mine  Enemies,  will  the  World,  think  me  inno- 
cent ?  —  or  will  even  the  Charity  of  my  very  friends  attempt  to 
exculpate  me  when  I  accuse  myself? 

"  Whatever  prudence  may  dictate,  yet  Conscience  and 
Honor,  God  and  Religion,  forbid  that  my  Mouth  should  speak 
what  my  Heart  disclaims.  I  cannot  profess  my  sorrow  for  an 
action  which  I  am  conscious  was  done  from  the  best  of  motives. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  89 

If  the  event  has  proved  contrary  to  my  expectations,  or  if  I  can 
be  persuaded  that  I  have  acted  upon  mistaken  principles,  I  am 
ready  not  only  to  Express  my  sorrow,  but  to  do  it  in  the  most 
open  and  public  manner.  But  'till  this  can  be  the  case,  'till  I 
can  be  fully  persuaded  that  I  have  really  done  wrong,  I  cannot 
be  persuaded  to  acknowledge  that  I  have  done  so. 

u  I  am  extremely  unhappy  to  differ  from  you  in  opinion  in 
anything,  but  more  especially  in  an  affair  of  so  much  conse- 
quence as  the  propriety  of  my  returning  to  Concord  upon  the 
terms  mentioned  in  your  Letter.  But  I  hope  that  the  reasons 
which  I  have  now  given,  added  to  the  inimical  disposition  which 
the  Committee  have  lately  shown  towards  me,  will  serve  in 
some  measure  as  an  excuse  for  my  not  following  your  advice  in 
this  affair. 

"  Believe  me,  Sir,  I  always  have  had,  and  still  retain,  the 
highest  veneration  for  your  judgement,  and  the  most  sincere  and 
dutiful  affection  for  your  Person  ;  and  hope  that  the  unhappi- 
ness  of  my  present  deplorable  situation  will  not  be  increased  by 
incurring  your  displeasure.  Be  assured,  Sir,  I  mean  riot  to  of- 
fend, and  hope  that  no  offence  will  be  taken. 

"  I  am  too  well  acquainted  with  your  Paternal  affection  for 
your  Children  to  doubt  of  your  kind  care  over  them.  But  you 
will  excuse  me  if  I  trouble  you  with  my  most  earnest  desires  and 
intreaties  for  your  peculiar  care  of  my  family,  whose  distressed 
circumstances  call  for  every  indulgence  and  alleviation  you  can 
afford  them. 

"  I  must  also  beg  a  continuance  of  your  Prayers  for  me,  that 
my  present  afflictions  may  have  a  suitable  impression  on  my 
mind,  and  that  in  due  time  I  may  be  extricated  out  of  all  my 
troubles.  That  this  may  be  the  case,  that  the  happy  time 
may  soon  come  when  I  may  return  to  my  family  in  peace  and 
safety,  and  when  every  individual  in  America  may  sit  down  under  his 
own  vine,  and  under  his  own  Fig-tree,  and  have  none  to  make  him 
afraid  is  the  constant  and  devout  wish  of 

"  Your  dutiful  and  Affectionate  Son, 

"BEN]*  THOMPSON. 

"  REV?  TIM?  WALKER." 


90  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Major  Thompson  was  not  the  only  person  in  those 
troubled  times  that  had  occasion  to  charge  upon  those 
espousing  the  championship  of  public  liberty  a  tyran- 
nical treatment  of  individuals  who  did  not  accord  with 
their  schemes  or  views.  Probably  in  our  late  war  of 
Rebellion  his  case  was  paralleled  by  those  of  hundreds 
in  both  sections  of  our  country,  who  with  halting  and 
divided  minds  or  unsatisfied  judgments  were  arrested  in 
the  process  of  decision  by  treatment  from  others  which 
put  them  under  the  lead  of  passion.  The  choice  of  a 
great  many  loyalists  in  our  Revolution  would  have  been 
wiser  and  more  satisfactory  to  themselves  had  they  been 
allowed  to  make  it  deliberately,  —  an  impossibility  un- 
der the  circumstances.  So  far  as  I  have  means  of  know- 
ing, this  letter  was  the  last  communication  which 
Thompson  ever  made  to  his  father-in-law  or  to  his 
wife,  directly  or  indirectly.  This  statement,  however, 
and  the  inferences  which  might  be  drawn  from  it,  are 
to  be  accepted  only  as  negative  evidence,  for  letters 
may  have  been  written  and  received  of  which  there  is 
no  record  or  tradition,  and  letters  may  have  been  writ- 
ten which  were  never  received  by  the  parties  to  whom 
they  were  respectively  addressed.  It  was  comparatively 
easy,  during  the  war,  for  persons  in  England  and  in  this 
country  who  belonged  to  the  same  side  in  interest  and 
sympathy  to  correspond  with  each  other,  taking  the 
risks  of  the  sea,  of  privateering,  and  of  capture.  But 
for  those  who  belonged  to  the  contending  parties,  sepa- 
rated by  the  ocean,  correspondence  was  more  em- 
barrassed. 

Certainly  all  the  claims  and  promptings  of  natural 
love  are  fully  and  tenderly  indulged  in  that  heart- 
written  letter.  Filial  gratitude  and  veneration,  and  a 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  91 

young  husband  and  father's  yearnings  struggle  in  it  with 
the  alternate  expression  of  a  deep  and  harrowing  sense 
of  unjust  treatment  and  unmerited  obloquy.  One  can 
hardly  suppress  the  wish  that  the  good  old  minister 
might  have  survived  to  know  the  philanthropic  labors 
and  the  peaceful  honors  of  his  son-in-law.  It  is  to  be 
feared,  however,  that  he  to  whom  Thompson  owed  so 
much,  and  for  whom  he  dropped  a  tear  and  yielded  to 
deep  emotion  when  speaking  confidentially  to  Pictet 
about  his  obligations,  went  to  his  honored  grave  with- 
out any  further  word  from  his  son-in-law,  though  he 
probably  had  tidings  of  him. 

Thompson  was  preparing  to  do  effective  service  in 
the  British  army  in  this  country  at  the  very  time  when 
the  aged  minister  sunk  peacefully  to  rest  in  his  parson- 
age at  Concord,  September  2,  1782. 

From  the  facts  and  documents  which  have  been  thus 
presented  at  length,  a  reader  who  cares  to  make  a  moral 
estimate  of  the  course  pursued  up  to  this  stage  by 
Major  Thompson,  and  of  his  subsequent  action,  must 
form  his  judgment.  Candor  will  make  an  allowance 
on  the  score  of  his  youth  and  the  influence  of  the  cir- 
cumstances amid  which  he  was  compelled  to  reach  a 
decision.  It  is  remarkable  that  his  two  most  intimate 
friends  in  later  life  have  given  us,  seemingly  as  deduc- 
tions from  his  own  confidential  statements,  reasons  for 
inferring  that  his  heart  was  from  the  first  on  the  side 
of  the  royalist  party.  The  following  is  a  translation 
from  the  narrative  of  Pictet,  in  continuation  of  that 
already  given :  — 

"  At  the  commencement  of  the  troubles  in  America  which 
preceded'  and  brought  about  the  war  of  Independence,  Thomp- 


92  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

son,  then  twenty  years  old,  was  bound  in  friendship  with  the 
Governor  of  the  Province,  who  was  his  compatriot  and  a 
supporter  of  the  government.  The  civil  and  military  trusts 
with  which,  while  still  so  young,  he  had  already  been  invested, 
continued  to  attach  him  to  the  royalist  party  by  duty  and  grati- 
tude. When  the  party  in  opposition  had  sway  in  his  Province, 
he  was  compelled  to  abandon  his  home  and  to  seek  an  asylum 
in  Boston,  then  occupied  by  the  English  troops Thomp- 
son was  received  with  distinction  by  the  British  commander, 
and  called  to  raise  a  regiment  for  the  King's  service.  But  the 
course  of  the  war  having  brought  about  the  evacuation  of  Boston 
in  the  spring  of  1776,  he  went  then  to  England,  and  was  made 
bearer  of  important  despatches  for  the  government." 

Cuvier's  report,  in  his  Eloge,  is  to  this  effect :  After 
having  referred  to  the  incident  by  which  "at  the  age  of 
nineteen,  the  hand  of  a  rich  widow  had  made  the  poor 
scholar,  at  the  moment  when  he  least  expected  it,  one  of 
the  most  considerable  men  in  the  colony,"  Cuvier  adds :  — 

"  Having  taken  side  with  the  royalist  party  during  the  troubles 
in  America,  the  populace  of  Concord  were  so  enraged  against 
him  that  he  found  it  requisite  to  take  refuge  in  Boston,  leaving 
his  wife  behind  him  pregnant  of  a  daughter.  The  former  he 
never  saw  again;  the  latter  joined  him  for  the  first  time  when 
twenty  years  of  age. 

u  One  of  the  first  triumphs  of  Washington  was  to  compel 
the  British  troops  to  evacuate  Boston  on  the  24th  of  March, 
1776,  and  Mr.  Thompson  was  the  'official  bearer  of  this  dis- 
astrous intelligence  to  London." 

Now  it  is  hardly  probable  that  the  then  Count  Rum- 
ford  in  confidential  narration  to  his  friends  intended  to, 
or  did,  disclose  a  secret  which  he  had  up  to  that  time 
kept  to  himself,  —  that  he  had  from  the  first  been  a 
royalist.  He  knew  too  well  what  he  had  left  in  writing 
on  this  side  of  the  water,  and  remembered  too  well  the 


Life  of  Count  Ritmford.  93 

confidence  and  friendship  reposed  in  him  by  Mr.  Bald- 
win, to  make  such  statements  concerning  that  period 
of  his  life  before  he  left  Concord.  I  have  found  no 
reason  for  doubting  that,  if  Thompson  had  been  treated 
in  a  conciliatory  manner  after  his  examination,  and 
had  been  gratified  in  his  desire  to  have  a  position 
in  the  American  army,  he  would  have  faithfully  served 
his  native  country.  Nor  do  I  imagine  that  under  any 
circumstances  he  would  have  proved  an  Arnold.  That 
he  was  deeply  wounded  in  spirit  and  irritated  in  tem- 
per when  he  formed  his  plan  of  exile  either  to  some 
distant  part  of  this  country  or  abroad  is  very  evident. 
But  that  this  sense  of  wrong,  or  irritation,  excited  in 
him  a  vengeful  purpose,  is  not  shown  by  anything 
known  to  have  been  said  by  him,  nor  is  it  necessarily 
indicated  by  what  he  did.  Neither  is  there  any  evi- 
dence that  when  Major  Thompson  left  Woburn,  ac- 
cording to  the  intention  which  he  frankly  communicated 
to  his  father-in-law,  he  had  resolved  to  join  the  ranks 
of  the  enemy,  or  even  to  seek  their  civil  protection. 
Pictet,  in  a  paragraph  which  I  have  omitted  from  the 
above  quotation,  says  that  Thompson  left  his  home  in 
November,  1773,  and  Cuvier  says  that  his  daughter 
was  not  born  till  after  his  departure.  These  errors  as 
to  matters  of  fact  may  persuade  us  that  both  Pictet 
and  Cuvier  erred  also  in  matters  of  inference  as  to  the 
early  predilections  of  Thompson  for  the  royalist  cause. 
Probably  circumstances  and  the  opening  of  opportuni- 
ties, more  than  any  settled  purpose,  decided  the  course 
of  this  forlorn  and  ill-treated  young  husband  and  fa- 
ther, adrift  on  the  world,  when  he  found  himself,  loosed 
from  all  home  ties,  beginning  to  wander  in  distracted 
times. 


94  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

There  was  really  nothing  secret  or  disguised  in  the 
plans  which  he  formed  for  seeking  "  in  a  foreign  land 
and  among  strangers/'  at  the  risk  of  homelessness  and 
poverty,  the  peace  and  protection  which  he  could  not 
find  in  his  own  dwelling.  He  did  not  privately  steal 
away.  He  remained  in  and  about  Woburn  two  months 
after  writing  his  last  letter  to  Mr.  Walker,  in  which  he 
so  deliberately  avowed  his  intentions.  He  settled  his 
affairs  with  his  neighbors,  collecting  dues  and  paying 
debts,  well  assured  that  his  wife  and  child  would  lack 
none  of  the  means  of  a  comfortable  support.  Having 
thus  made  all  his  preparations,  he  started  from  Woburn, 
October  13,  1775,  in  a  country  vehicle,  accompanied  by 
his  step-brother,  Josiah  Pierce,  who  drove  him  near  to 
the  bounds  of  the  Province,  on  the  shore  of  Narragan- 
sett  Bay,  whence  young  Pierce  returned.  Thompson 
was  taken  by  a  boat  on  board  the  Scarborough,  British 
frigate,  in  the  harbor  of  Newport.  (See  Appendix.) 

What  Major  Thompson  said  or  did  to  secure  him- 
self a  favorable  reception  from  the  commander  of  the 
vessel,  —  whether  he  sought  refuge  as  a  persecuted  suf- 
ferer, or  proffered  service  as  a  new-won  friend,  there  are 
no  means  at  this  time  for  knowing.  The  vessel  itself 
very  soon  came  round  to  Boston,  and  he  came  in  her 
in  some  capacity.  Here  he  remained6  till  the  evacua- 
tion of  the  town  by  the  British  forces,  of  which  event 
he  was  undoubtedly  the  bearer  of  tidings  to  England, 
in  despatches  from  General  Howe.  Here  the  work 
of  conversion,  slow  or  protracted,  was  completed ;  and 
henceforward  we  are  to  know  Benjamin  Thompson,  till 
the  close  of  the  war,  as  in  council  and  in  arms  an  op- 
ponent of  the  cause  of  liberty  for  his  native  land.  He 
must  have  done  appreciable  service  in  the  four  or  five 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  95 

months  of  his  new  apprenticeship  in  Boston,  in  order 
to  have  won  so  soon  the  place  of  an  official  in  the  Brit- 
ish government 

It  has  come  down  distinctly  in  the  family  of  the  Rev. 
William  Walter,  D.  D.,  as  I  learn  from  a  granddaugh- 
ter, that  during  Thompson's  stay  in  Boston  he  was  a 
somewhat  secret  inmate  of  that  clergyman's  family  in 
their  house  in  South  Street.  Dr.  —  then  Mr. — Walter, 
a  graduate  of  Harvard  College  in  1756,  was  Rector  of 
Trinity  Church  in  Boston,  having  been  ordained  by 
the  Bishop  of  London.  There  is  a  vague  tradition 
that  the  Rev.  Mr.  Walker  contrived  to  have  an  inter- 
view—  quite  an  unsatisfactory  one  —  with  his  son-in- 
law  while  he  was  thus  a  guest  of  Mr.  Walter.  It  may 
have  been  so.  But  the  jealousy  of  any  intercourse  be- 
tween the  town  and  the  suburbs  when  occupied  respec- 
tively by  the  hostile  armies,  and  the  difficulties  thrown 
in  the  way  of  such  intercourse,  render  this  alleged  inter- 
view doubtful,  and,  unless  sought  by  both  parties, 
improbable.  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  Mr.  Walter 
and  Thompson  were  fellow-passengers  to  England. 
They  were  thenceforward  intimate  friends.  At  the 
peace,  Mr.  Walter  came  to  Sherburne,  Nova  Scotia, 
as  a  Doctor  of  Divinity,  and  there  exercised  his  clerical 
functions,  having  received  a  large  grant  of  land  from 
the  crown.  He  returned  to  Boston  in  1791,  and  was 
chosen  Rector  of  Christ  Church.  I  find  mention  of 
him  till  his  death,  in  1800,  in  letters  of  Count  Rum- 
ford,  as  a  confidential  friend  with  whom  he  corre- 
sponded. Unfortunately,  the  Count's  numerous  letters 
to  him  have  not  been  preserved. 

Of  course  there  was  much  interest  and  curiosity 
among  the  friends  and  relatives  of  Major  Thompson, 


96  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

to    learn    his  whereabouts  after    his    departure.       They 
could  hear  only  rumors  like  the  following. 

Mrs.  Baldwin  wrote  to  her  husband  at  the  camp  at 
Cambridge,  under  date  from  Woburn,  January  15, 

1776:  — 

"  Mrs.  Pierce  [mother  of  Thompson]  has  heard  that  you 
said  you  knew  that  Major  Thompson  was  in  Boston.  She 
gives  her  compliments,  and  begs  that  if  you  know  anything 
where  he  is,  be  so  kind  as  to  let  her  know  ;  she  is  in  pain  to 
hear." 

And  again, 

"  WOBURN,  Feb.  7,  1776.  —  I  must  inform  you  that  Brother 
Cyrus  saw  Mr.  Parkman,  —  informs  him  that  our  famous  Major 
Thompson  is  in  Boston,  a  clerk  for  a  Major [name  illegi- 
ble). Mrs.  Thompson  is  in  Woburn." 

After  the  army  •  had  gone  with  General  Washington 
to  New  York,  Colonel  Baldwin,  who  was  on  duty  there, 
wrote  to  Mrs.  Baldwin  from  the 

"  Camp  at  Mile  Square,  about  five  miles  north  of  King's 
Bridge,  and  near  General  Lee's  Head-quarters,  October  22d, 
1776.  I  have  had  no  opportunity  to  find  out  whether  Major 
Thompson  is  with  the  enemy  or  not." 

The  first  trustworthy  information  received  about 
Major  Thompson  by  his  friends  was  that  communi- 
cated in  letters  from  London  by  American  refugees 
there  resident.  These  letters  made  known  his  rapid 
advancement  in  a  career  in  which  we  must  soon  trace 
him. 

Mr.  George  R.  Baldwin  copied,  in  1858,  the  follow- 
ing papers,  which  he  obtained  at  that  time  from  Cyrus 
Thompson,  Esq.,  grandson  of  Justice  Samuel  Thomp- 
son, named  in  them.  They  have  an  historical  and  per- 
sonal interest. 


of  Count  Rumford.  97 

"  Confiscation  Papers  of  Benj?    Thompson,  Absentee.      Common- 
wealth of  Massachusetts,  Middlesex,  ss. 

"To  MESSRS.  BARTHOLOMEW  RICHARDSON,  JR.,  NOAH  EATON, 
and  ABIJAH  THOMPSON,  all  of  Woburn,  in  the  County  of 
Middlesex  aforesaid,  Greeting : 

"  Whereas  it  has  been  represented  that  Benjamin  Thompson, 
late  of  Woburn,  Physician,  now  an  Absentee,  hath  fled  from 
his  habitation  to  the  Enemies  of  the  United  States  for  protec- 
tion, leaving  behind  him  real  and  personal  Estate  of  more  than 
Twenty  Pounds  in  value,  and  that  he  hath  been  absent  from  his 
usual  place  of  abode  more  than  three  months  : 

"  Pursuant,  therefore,  to  a  Law  of  this  State  in  such  cases 
provided,  and  the  authority  to  me  therein  given,  I  do  hereby 
authorise  and  empower  you,  the  above-named  three  Persons, 
a  Committee  to  receive  and  examine  the  claims  of  the  several 
Creditors  to  the  Estate  of  the  said  Absentee  ;  and  you  are  hereby 
allowed  three  months'  time  from  the  date  hereof,  in  which 
time  to  transact  the  said  business.  You  are  in  all  cases  to 
proceed  by  the  same  rules  as  are  by  law  prescribed  for  insolvent 
Estates,  and  to  report  to  me  your  doings  at  the  end  of  the  said 
three  months,  and  in  all  things  deal  impartially  as  you  are 
sworn,  and  you  are  to  notify  W™  Hunt,  Esq.,  to  contest  the 
claims  before  you. 

"  Given  under  my  hand  and  seal  of  office,  this  fifth  day  of 
September,  A.  D.  1781. 

"  OLIVER  PRESCOTT,  Prob. 

EARTH.  RICHARDSON,  -\  _  0  _ 

_.  /  Sworn    before    me,   SAM*-    THOMP- 

"Dec'  4.    NOAH  EATON,  V  „   ,     „        „ 

(SON,  Justice  of  the  Peace" 
ABIJAH  THOMPSON.      ) 

"  A  List  of  the  Claims  exhibited  and  allowed  agst.  the  Estate  of 
Benjamin  Thompson,  late  of  Woburn,  Absentee. 

"  To  Hannah  Flagg,  by  Legacy 

Principal  £  26   13     4 

Interest  due  on  the  Same          35     8     °  £  62     i     4 

This   Legacy   was   ordered   to   be   paid  to  the  said 
Hannah  Flagg  in  the  Testament  of  Capt.  Eben- 
7 


98  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

ezer    Thompson,    deceased,  Grandfather    to   said 
Absentee. 

To  Mary  Carter's  Account  £012     o 

To  Loammi  Baldwin  on  Note  and  Ace*  4   13     6 

To    Timothy  Walker,    Jr.,   note    dated    Aug.   i6th, 

1774,  with  interest  for  the  same  127   16     o 

To  Timothy  Walker,  Jr.,  other  note,  dated  Dec^   14th, 

1774,  with  interest  for  the  same  867 

To  Timothy  Walker,  Jr.,  another  note  dated  Nov.  2d , 

1774,  with  interest  2     210 

Cost  of  Advertising  012     o 

Time  expended  by  the  Commissioners  4    10     o 

To  Jonathan   Randall  for  expense  at  Sundry  times, 

when  examining  the  claims  012     o 

To  Samuel  Thompson  for  Journey  in  part  to  Cam- 
bridge for  Commissioners  4/,  Fees  \j  080 
Swearing  the  Commissioners  and  lodging  the  return          060 
Fees  paid  °     3     3 

£212     3     3 
"  WOBURN,  4th  Detf   1781. 

"  BARTH^  RICHARDSON, 
NOAH  EATON,  '  \-  Commissioners" 

ABIJAH  THOMPSON, 


iON,  \ 

f,    ) 


"MIDDLESEX,  12  Dec.  1781.  —  Exhibited  upon  oath  by  Samuel 
Thompson,  Esq.,  Attorney  to  one  of  the  principal  Creditors, 
who  likewise  attested  that  the  claims  were  contested  by  Wil- 
liam Hunt,  Esq.,  Attorney  for  the  Commonwealth,  and  I  have 
examined  the  same  and  do  allow  thereof. 

«  OLIVER  PRESCOTT,  J.  Prob." 

"  The  account  of  the  Committee  of  Correspondence  and  Safety,  &c. 
for  the  Town  of  Wilmington  for  the  year  1779. 

"  The  Committee  aforesaid  charge  themselves*  with  the  Rent  of 
Land  of  Benj.  Thompson,  an  Absentee,  for  the  year  aforesaid,  amount- 
ing to  £38  o  o 

Said  Comttee  crave  an  allowance  for  their  cost  and  trouble  800 
Balance  in  favour  of  the  Estate,  £  30  o  o 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  99 

tc  Account  as  above  for  the  year  1780. 

"  The  Committee  aforesaid   charge    themselves  with  the  Rent  of 
Lands  which  did  belong  to  Benjamin   Thompson,  an   Absentee,  for 
the  year    1780,   said  Land   lying    in  Wilmington    aforesaid,  amount- 
ing to  £13500 
Said  Comttee  crave  an  allowance  in   their   discharge 

as  follows :  viz. 

For  Advertisement  i8/,  Expenses  at  Vendue  £  12   18       £13    16     o 
Committee'  Time,  and  Leases,  1212     o 

Journey  to  Cambridge  and  Expenses  to  Boston  to  pay 

Balance  to  the  Treasurer,  12     o     o 

Probate  fees,  412     o 

£43     oo 

"  MIDDLESEX,  3d  May,  1780.  —  Having  examined  this  account 
and  sworn  Deacon  Benjamin  Jaquith,  Chairman  of  the  Com- 
mittee, I  allow  thereof. 

"  OLIVER  PRESCOTT,  J.  Prob." 

Major  Thompson  had  been  named  among  the  pro- 
scribed in  the  Alienation  Act  passed  by  the  State  of 
New  Hampshire  in  1778. 


CHAPTE  R     III. 

Major  Thompson  s  Mission  to  Lord  G.  Germaine.  —  His  Ser- 
vices to  the  Ministry.  —  Made  Secretary  of  Georgia.  — 
Explores  London.  —  Objects  of  his  Interest.  —  Experi- 
ments. —  Visit  to  Bath.  —  Guest  of  Lord  Germaine.  — 
Fire- Arms  and  Gunpowder.  —  Sir  Joseph  Banks.  —  Na- 
val Service,  and  Experiments.  —  Made  Under-Secretary 
of  State.  —  Loyalists  in  England.  —  Judge  Curwen.  — 
Dr.  Gardiner.  —  President  Laurens.  —  Disastrous  In- 
telligence. —  Thompson  commissioned  as  Lieutenant- Colo- 
nel for  Service  in  America.  —  Arrival  in  Charles- 
ton^ S.  C.  —  In  Action  there.  —  Arrival  in  New  Tork. 
—  His  Command.  —  Recruiting.  — -  Presentation  of  Col- 
ors. —  Severe  Charges  against  Thompson.  —  Colonel  Sim- 
'  coe  s  Reflections.  —  Returns  to  England.  —  Promotion.  — 
On  Half-Pay  for  Life.  — Agency  for  Loyalists. 

IN  one  of  his  letters  to  his  father-in-law,  on  a  pre- 
vious page,  Benjamin  Thompson  had  written,  "  I 
never  did,  nor  (let  my  treatment  be  what  it  will)  ever 
will  do,  any  action  that  may  have  the  most  distant 
tendency  to  injure  the  true  interests  of  this  my  native 
country."  Any  one  who  should  assume — as  I  do 
not  —  to  maintain  the  consistency  between  this  solemn 
pledge  and  the  agency  to  which  Major  Thompson 
immediately  and  zealously  committed  himself  on  his 
arrival  in  England  would  have  to  fashion  for  him  an 
argument  which,  however  plausible,  would  be  subtle 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  101 

and  casuistical.  He  would  need  to  undertake  to  prove 
that  Mr.  Thompson  had  persuaded  himself  that  "  the 
true  interests  of  his  native  country  "  were  not  to  be 
secured  by  resisting  British  authority  and  achieving 
its  political  independence,  but  would  be  realized  by 
allowing  that  authority,  with  whatever  limitations  and 
conditions,  —  graciously  defined  after  submission  had 
been  exacted, — to  be  permanently  restored  over  the 
revolting  Provinces.  It  might  be  a  part  of  this  plea 
to  show  that,  when  he  left  America,  Major  Thompson 
had  become  satisfied  that  the  resources  of  this  country 
were  unequal  to  success  in  the  struggle  ;  and  that  when 
he  reached  England  he  was  so  impressed  by  the  tokens 
of  the  royal  and  ministerial  ability  to  subdue  a  rebel- 
lion, that  he  was  willing  to  help  bring  about  what  was 
seemingly  inevitable. 

As  I  would  not  offer  such  a  plea  for  the  subject  of  this 
memoir,  neither  will  I  disguise  or  palliate  the  fact  that 
he  threw  his  whole  efficiency  —  doubtless  also  his  pride 
and  ambition  —  into  the  service  of  the  British  ministry. 
He  must  have  said  or  done  something  at  once  to  secure 
his  ready  welcome,  and  must  have  so  improved  upon 
the  opportunity  which  that  afforded  him  as  to  win 
confidence  and  to  secure  position  and  influence.  The 
smart  of  indignation  at  the  injustice  which  he  conceived 
he  had  borne,  and  the  contempt  exhibited  by  the  patriots 
in  rejecting  his  proffered  services,  might  either  have 
combined  with  or  yielded  to  the  lures  of  patronage 
and  distinction.  Thenceforward  the  rustic  youth  be- 
came the  companion  of  gentlemen  of  wealth  and  cul- 
ture, of  scientific  philosophers,  of  the  nobility,  and  of 
princes.  The  kind  of  influence  which  he  at  once  began 
to  exert,  and  the  promotions  which  he  so  soon  received 


IO2  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

in   England,  answer  to  a  class  of  services  rendered  by 
him  of  a  nature  not  to  be  misconceived. 

Pictet,  proceeding  with  his  report  of  the  confidential 
disclosures  of  his  friend  from  the  point  at  which  we 
left  them,  wrote  the  following:  — 

"  They  had  not  in  England  at  that  time  much  exact  informa- 
tion about  the  state  of  the  country,  all  whose  ties  to  the  mother 
land  had  been  ruptured  for  many  years.  Thompson  thoroughly 
understood  the  matter.  He  could  give  trustworthy  intelligence 
about  the  topography,  and  about  the  events  of  the  war  in  which 
he  had  played  a  part.  He  was  not  slow  in  winning  the  confi- 
dence of  the  Secretary  of  State  for  the  Colonies.  Some  time  after 
his  arrival  in  London  he  was  appointed  Secretary  of  the  Prov- 
ince of  Georgia,  —  an  office,  however,  which  he  never  filled. 
He  remained  in  London  attached  to  the  Colonial  Office." 

When,  soon  after  the  peace,  the  members  of  the 
successive  administrations  and  parliaments  of  Great 
Britain  looked  back  over  the  long  series  of  mortifying 
blunders,  mishaps,  and  discomfitures  connected  with  the 
management  of  the  war,  there  was  one  conviction  which, 
as  an  explanation  or  a  palliation,  offered  them  chief 
relief,  though  in  itself  hardly  a  consolation,  namely, 
that  they  had  all  along  been  working  in  the  dark.  They 
were  made  aware  of  the  entire  ignorance,  and  of  the 
wholly  misleading  knowledge,  so  called,  of  this  country, 
its  geography,  its  people,  their  feelings,  purposes,  and 
resources,  under  which  the  war  had  been  conducted. 
This  ignorance  was  felt  in  itself  to  have  been  culpable, 
though  the  reason  of  it  had  been  mainly  indifference, 
if  not  arrogant  contempt.  Means  of  information  had 
been  within  the  reach  of  the  government.  Franklin 
and  other  provincial  agents  had  offered  to  enlighten  the 
ministry.  Whole  drawers  of  despatches  and  other 


Life  of  Count  Rutnford.  103 

important  papers  relating  to  the  American  Colonies 
had  lain  unopened  in  government  offices.  Indeed, 
the  first  knowledge  which  some  of  the  custodians  of 
those  papers  and  many  more  recent  historical  and 
political  essayists  obtained  about  important  documents 
hid  away  in  those  offices  came  to  them  through  the 
requests  sent  in  for  the  privilege  of  examining  them  by 
investigators  like  Mr.  Sparks,  who  crossed  the  ocean  for 
that  purpose. 

The  receipt  in  England  of  the  intelligence  that  the 
British  army,  after  having  been  cooped  up  in  Boston 
for  nine  months,  had  been  compelled  by  Washington 
to  evacuate  it  by  their  ships,  and  that  a  whole  fleet  of 
store-vessels  and  transports  on  their  way  to  Boston  to 
relieve  the  army  were  likely,  one  by  one,  to  fall  into 
the  hands  of  the  Yankees,  furnishing  them  with  just  the 
munitions  and  goods  which  they  most  needed,  caused 
an  intense  excitement  and  dismay.  The  intelligence  of 
the  evacuation  was  made  public  in  the  London  Gazette 
of  May  3,  1776,  though,  during  the  storm  which  the 
announcement  raised  in  Parliament,  suspicions  were 
thrown  out  that  the  ministry  had  had  earlier  knowl- 
edge of  the  mortifying  fact  which  they  had  concealed. 

It  would  be  pleasant  to  think  that  Major  Thompson 
bore  the  tidings  of  that  significant  prognostication  of 
the  course  of  the  war.  That,  however,  could  hardly 
be  regarded  as  the  reason  for  his  welcome  from  Lord 
George  Germaine,  to  whom  he  would  have  carried  the 
despatch,  nor  for  his  immediate  admission  to  a  desk 
in  the  Colonial  Office.  He,  of  course,  proffered,  and 
showed  he  could  impart,  "information,"  as  Pictet 
learned  from  himself.  That  a  youth  of  twenty-three 
years  should  thus  at  once  be  relied  upon  and  rewarded 


1O4  L,ife  of  Count  Rumford. 

for  service  of  that  kind  was  in  perfect  consistency  with 
the  mode  in  which  affairs  were  then  managed.  No 
doubt  c<  topography  "  was  the  matter  of  his  first  con- 
versation with  Lord  George  and  the  youth  had  only 
to  fall  back  upon  his  school  lessons. 

The  head  of  the  Department  himself  was  wholly  in- 
competent for  the  place,  and  was  but  a  blunderer.  It 
was  in  keeping  with  either  the  comic  or  the  tragic  ele- 
ment in  his  management  that  he  should  have  accepted 
so  young  an  adviser,  and  have  extended  to  him  so  large 
a  confidence,  so  well  rewarded.  Lord  George  had 
been  received  into  office  as  a  prominent  and  effective 
agent  in  the  subjugation  of  the  American  Colonies, 
having  been  made  Secretary  on  November  10,  1775. 
He  was  desirous,  by  complete  subserviency  to  the 
schemes  of  the  King  and  ministry,  of  retrieving  his  own 
previously  damaged  reputation  as  a  soldier.  And  we 
may  reasonably  infer,  that,  as  a  condition  of  securing 
his  patronage  and  confidence,  Thompson  must  have 
shown  that  the  information  he  could  impart  and  the 
counsels  he  should  suggest  would  lie  midway  between 
those  given  by  such  advisers  as  had  previously  been 
listened  to  or  set  aside  by  the  ministry.  There  were 
honest,  wise,  and  every  way  competent  men,  Americans 
and  Englishmen,  within  easy  reach  of  the  administra- 
tion, and  indeed  proffering  their  counsels  and  warnings, 
who  knew  much  more,  and  saw  far  more  keenly  into 
the  horoscope  of  probable  events,  than  did  Thompson. 
But  their  advice,  so  far  as  it  involved  forebodings,  or 
even  deliberation  and  caution,  was  rejected  by  the 
ministry  as  unwelcome,  because  given  in  the  interest 
of  the  rebellion.  Others  'there  were,  like  the  refugee 
officers  of  the  crown  and  other  loyalists,  who  had  been 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  105 

driven  hence  by  an  angry  populace.  These  were  ready 
to  sustain  the  contemptuous  opinions  of  a  few  members 
of  the  Parliament  on  the  side  of  the  ministry,  that 
resolute  measures  on  the  part  of  the  King,  and  a  few 
regiments  of  British  soldiers,  would  soon  extinguish  the 
threatening  flame.  The  advice  of  the  former  class  was 
rejected  in  scorn  ;  that  of  the  latter  class  had  been 
found  misleading,  and  dangerously  falsified  by  the  at- 
tempts to  follow  it.  Thompson  must  have  found  his 
cue  in  substantially  pursuing  a  midway  course.  Cu- 
vier,  referring  to  his  first  presenting  himself  before  the 
Minister  with  his  despatches,  says  :  "  On  this  occasion, 
by  the  clearness  of  his  details  and  the  gracefulness  of 
his  manners  he  insinuated  himself  so  far  into  the 
graces  of  Lord  George  Germaine  that  he  took  him 
into  his  employment."  An  intelligent  and  observing 
witness  on  the  spot,  who  had  known  Thompson  as  an 
apprentice-boy  in  Salem,  and  who  is  by  and  by  to  be 
quoted,  tells  us  that  the  young  man  soon  became  such 
a  favorite  with  Lord  George  that  he  was  daily  in  the 
habit  of  breakfasting,  dining,  and  supping  with  him  at 
his  lodgings ;  while  it  soon  came  to  be  known  among 
the  American  refugees  in  England,  that  rills  from  the 
fountain  of  favor  and  patronage  flowed  through  Thomp- 
son, and  that  he  himself  was  becoming  rich  and  conse- 
quential. There  is  but  one  fair  construction  to  be  put 
on  these  facts.  In  accordance  with  the  strain  of  what 
has  previously  been  said  about  Thompson's  espousal 
of  the  unpatriotic  side  in  our  war,  if  it  were  a  matter 
of  importance  to  ascertain  how  and  in  what  way  he 
committed  himself  to  the  King's  service,  and  what  was 
the  nature  of  the  information  or  advice  imparted  by 
him,  we  should  have  in  the  main  to  depend  wholly 


io6  Life  oj  Count  Rumford. 

upon  inferences.  With  his  great  natural  abilities  and 
his  spirit  of  observation,  not  forgetting  his  own  appreci- 
ation of  himself,  he  might  have  been  a  really  valuable 
counsellor  to  those  who  rejected  such  as  were  more 
wise  and  such  as  were  more  reckless.  He  may  have 
satisfied  himself  that  the  rebellion  would,  in  any  event, 
stop  short  of  securing  the  independence  of  the  Colonies, 
and  have  looked  upon  himself  as  a  mediator  on  the  side 
of  the  stronger  party,  aiming  in  a  friendly  antagonism 
to  secure  the  real  interests  of  the  weaker  party.  Besides 
his  clerkship,  his  first  civil  appointment,  as  he  informed 
Pictet,  appears  to  have  been  as  Secretary  of  the  Prov- 
ince of  Georgia,  —  in  which  position,  however,  he  would 
seem  to  have  done  nothing,  simply  because  there  was 
nothing  to  be  done  in  it.  The  British  authority  was 
nominally  restored  in  that  Province  by  the  return  of 
the  Governor,  Sir  James  Wright,  July  20,  1779. 
But  it  was  a  short  and  barren  restoration.  The  loyal- 
ists there,  who  had  been  beguiled  by  the  royal  proclama- 
tion into  a  belief  that  an  end  had  come  to  their  troubles, 
had  occasion  soon  after  to  rue  their  confidence,  when 
orders  came  from  England,  in  1782,  that  the  royal 
authority  should  be  abandoned  there,  —  orders  which 
included,  of  course,  an  abandonment  of  the  loyalists 
themselves,  and  a  surrender  of  their  property  to  con- 
fiscation. In  vain  did  they  offer  to  the  King's  general 
the  assurance  that  they  would  still  hold  the  Province  for 
him  if  he  would  give  them  a  single  regiment  of  foot  to 
assist  the  Georgia  Rangers.  We  may  be  sure  that 
Thompson's  secretaryship,  if  rewarded,  was  ineffective. 
We  may  be  sure,  too,  that  the  first  occupation  of 
Thompson,  apart  from  the  discharge  of  his  duties  as  a 
private  secretary  and  a  subordinate  official  in  his  De- 


Life  of  Count  RumforcL  107 

partment,  would  be  to  make  the  most  and  the  best  of 
his  opportunities  in  acquainting  himself  with  the  British 
metropolis  and  in  seeking  introductions  alike  to  men 
in  public  station  and  to  those  engaged  in  scientific  pur- 
suits. Nothing  of  interest  would  escape  his  keen  ob- 
servation, and  no  means  of  personal  improvement  or 
acquisition,  through  men  or  things,  would  fail  to  yield 
him  advancement.  It  was  a  place  for  the  country  youth 
to  indulge  his  genius,  and  for  the  aspirant  for  thrift  and 
fame  to  gratify  his  ambition.  He.  happened,  as  did 
Franklin  a  little  earlier,  upon  a  time  and  stage  of  de- 
velopment when  science  and  philosophy  were  making  a 
marked  transition  in  their  methods,  from  the  specula- 
tive to  the  experimental  process.  Thompson's  genius 
was  eminently  practical  and  experimental,  and  he  showed 
a  most  cautious  painstaking  in  the  most  minute  processes 
and  conditions  with  which  he  applied  the  tests  of  experi- 
ment. After  he  had  given  some  considerable  time  to 
peering  round  and  through  the  metropolis,  as  his  posi- 
tion naturally  prompted  him  he  turned  his  attention 
to  certain  improvements  in  economy,  utility,  and  effi- 
ciency in  connection  with  military  details.  He  was  so 
situated  that  his  suggestions  would  readily  obtain  a 
hearing  and  attention.  He  advised  and  procured  the 
adoption  of  bayonets  for  the  fusees  of  the  Horse- 
Guards,  to  be  used  in  fighting  on  foot.  He  continued 
his  experiments  on  gunpowder,  with  greater  facilities  at 
his  command  for  extending  them  and  making  them 
yield  to  the  severest  tests  of  science.  The  range  and 
character  of  his  social  intimacies  formed  within  the 
next  year  or  two  show  how  diligently  and  successfully 
he  cultivated  the  acquaintance  of  men  of  station  and 
distinction.  His  manners  with  such  were  always  fasci- 


io8  Life  of  Co^mt  Rinnford. 

nating  and  ingratiating.  In  the  autumn  of  the  year 
T777>  on  Account  of  his  sufferings  from  impaired  health, 
Mr.  Thompson  went  to  .Bath,  where  he  spent  some 
time  in  using  the  waters.  Here  he  resumed  and  con- 
tinued his  favorite  scientific  experiments,  especially  a 
series  of  them  to  test  the  cohesive  force  of  different 
bodies.  In  July,  1778,  he  was  the  guest  of  Lord 
George  Germaine  at  his  country-seat  at  Stoneland 
Lodge.  Here,  with  the  assistance,  as  he  tells  us,  of 
the  Rev.  Mr.  Ball,  Rector  of  Withyham,  he  under- 
took experiments  "  to  determine  the  most  advan- 
tageous situation  for  the  vent  in  fire-arms,  and  to 
measure  the  velocities  of  bullets  and  the  recoil  under 
various  circumstances.  I  had  hopes,  also,  of  being 
able  to  find  out  the  velocity  of  the  inflammation  of 
gunpowder,  and  to  measure  its  force  more  accurately 
than  had  hitherto  been  done/'  * 

On  Thompson's  return  to  London  from  Bath,  he 
communicated  the  results  of  his  investigations  into 
the  cohesion  of  bodies  to  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  President 
of  the  Royal  Society.  Being  thus  self-introduced  as  a 
scientific  inquirer  to  that  eminent  man,  he  was  soon  on 
most  intimate  terms  with  him,  and  became  one  of  his 
nearest  circle  of  friends.  •  It  was  not  in  1778,  as  stated 
by  his  biographers,  but  in  1779,  that  Thompson  .was 
elected  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society.  His  certificate 
for  election  describes  him  "as  a  gentleman  well  versed 
in  natural  knowledge  and  many  branches  of  polite 
learning."  f 

He  very  soon  became  one  of  the  most  active  and  hon- 

*  An  Account  of  some  Experiments  upon  Gunpowder,  &c. 

f  History  of  the  Royal  Society  &c.     By  Charles  Richard  Weld,  Esq.     Vol.    II. 

p.  212. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  109 

ored  members  of  the  Society,  always  attending  its  meet- 
ings when  he  was  in  London.  In  order  that  he  might 
pursue  his  experiments  on  gunpowder  with  great  guns, 
he  sought,  and  readily  obtained,  the  most  favorable 
opportunity  with  extraordinary  facilities  for  so  doing. 
In  the  Essay  already  quoted  he  thus  refers  to  an  occasion 
which  also  enabled  him  to  engage  in  sea-service  :  — 

"  During  a  cruise  which  I  made,  as  a  volunteer,  in  the  Vic- 
tory, with  the  British  fleet,  under  the  command  of  my  late 
worthy  friend  Sir  Charles  Hardy,  in  the  year  1779,  I  had  many 
opportunities  of  attending  to  the  firing  of  heavy  cannon  ;  for 
though  we  were  not  fortunate  enough  to  come  to  a  general 
action  with  the  enemy,  as  is  well  known,  yet,  as  the  men  were 
frequently  exercised  at  the  great  guns  and  in  firing  at  marks, 
and  as  some  of  my  friends  in  the  fleet,  then  captains  (since  made 
admirals),  as  the  Honourable  Keith  Stewart,  who  commanded 
the  Berwick  of  74  guns,  —  Sir  Charles  Douglas,  who  com- 
manded the  Duke  of  98  guns, — and  Admiral  Macbride,  who 
was  then  captain  of  the  Bienfaisant  of  64  guns,  were  kind 
enough,  at  my  request,  to  make  a  number  of  experiments,  and 
particularly  by  firing  a  greater  number  of  bullets  at  once  from 
their  heavy  guns  than  ever  had  been  done  before,  and  observing 
the  distances  at  which  they  fell  in  the  sea,  —  I  had  opportunities 
of  making  several  very  interesting  observations,  which  gave  me 
much  new  light  relative  to  the  action  of  fired  gunpowder." 

He  also  made  a  study  of  the  principles  of  naval 
artillery,  which  he  contributed  as  a  chapter  to  Stal- 
kartt's  Treatise  on  Naval  Architecture,  published  in 
1781.  He  likewise  devised  a  new  cx>de  of  marine 
signals  which  has  not  been  made  public.  The  period 
and  the  state  of  things  in  which  he  thus  devoted  his 
genius  to  practical  science  were  peculiarly  suited  to 
procure  him  a  full  appreciation. 

The  Annual  Register,  in  its  chronicre  of  promotions 


i  io  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

for  the  year  1780,  records  that  in  September,  "  B. 
Thompson,  Esq.,  was  made  Under-Secretary  of  State 
for  the  Northern  Department."  The  oversight  of  all 
the  practical  details  for  recruiting,  equipping,  trans- 
porting, and  victualling  the  British  forces,  and  of  many 
other  incidental  arrangements,  was  thus  committed  to 
him.  Though  he  discharged  the  duties  of  this  office  in 
person  but  little  more  than  one  year,  his  influence 
would  naturally  be  felt  while  the  administration  of 
which  he  was  a  subordinate  remained  in  power.  The 
tenor  of  his  counsels  has  not  transpired,  nor  are  we 
sufficiently  well  informed  about  the  matter  to  say 
whether  he  had  any  special  theory,  plan,  or  policy; 
whether  he  was  a  prime  originator,  or  only  a  subservient 
agent,  of  measures  the  results  of  which  could  have 
afforded  but  little  satisfaction  to  those  who  were  re- 
sponsible for  them.  If  he  often  attended  the  debates 
in  Parliament,  as  doubtless  he  did,  he  had  full  oppor- 
tunities of  watching  how  the  tide  turned  to  ebb  at  the 
very  moment  before  it  seemed  to  have  reached  a  full 
flood ;  and  if  he  was  discerning  in  the  interpretation  of 
signs,  he  must  have  known  that  his  official  service 
would  be  brief.  As  we  shall  see,  he  availed  himself 
of  a  graceful  occasion  for  resignation,  most  probably  in 
full  foresight  of  an  alternative  method  of  release.  The 
exercise  of  his  genius  and  the  way  in  which  he  could 
best  serve  his  fellow-men  —  that  being  afterwards  the 
great  aim  of  his  life  —  lay  in  a  direction  quite  different 
from  his  present  employments.  No  one,  therefore, 
biographer  or  critic,  need  be  concerned  to  plead  for  him 
in  an  office  where  success  would  have  been  worse  than 
failure.  He  first  signed  official  papers  October  27,  1780. 
Thompson  has  left  an  interesting  token  of  his  of- 


Life  of  Count  Ritmford.  in 

ficiousness  in  the  service  of  King  George  III.  in  one 
of  the  manuscript  volumes  in  the  British  Museum  in 
London.  That  king  showed  a  most  commendable  zeal 
in  collecting  a  library  of  all  the  books  and  papers  which 
came  from,  or  which  would  throw  light  upon,  the  Ameri- 
can Colonies  from  their  first  planting  to  his  own  time. 
A  large  portion  of  this  collection  came  through  the 
hands  of  George  IV.  into  the  national  repository.  In  it 
is  a  small  quarto  volume  containing  a  series  of  letters 
from'  Dr.  Franklin  to  the  Rev.  Dr.  Cooper,  an  eminent 
minister  in  Boston,  upon  American  politics,  from  1769 
to  1774,  with  Dr.  Cooper's  answers;  and  also  some  let- 
ters from  Governor  Pownall  to  Dr.  Cooper.  There  is 
added  "  a  short  history  of  those  letters,  or  an  account 
of  the  manner  in  which  they  happened  to  fall  into  the 
hands  of  the  present  proprietor  of  them,"  Mr.  Thomp- 
son. 

From  this  "account"  it  appears  that  when  Dr. 
Cooper  left  Boston,  after  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill, 
to  find  refuge  in  the  country,  as  his  effects,  which  he 
took  with  him,  would  be  subject  to  search,  he  committed 
these  valuable  papers  to  the  care  of  his  friend,  Mr. 
Jeffries,  one  of  the  selectmen  of  the  town,  who  was 
then  confined  by  sickness.  Mr.  Jeffries  consigned  them 
to  a  trunk  containing  things  of  his  own.  When  he  too 
left  Boston,  forgetting  what  had  thus  been  intrusted  to 
him,  he  left  the  trunk  in  charge  of  his  son,  Dr.  Jeffries, 
who,  remaining  in  the  town,  was  in  sympathy  with  the 
royalist  party.  At  the  evacuation  of  Boston  he  took 
the  papers  with  him  to  Halifax.  "  From  Halifax  he 
brought  them  with  him  to  London  in  January  last 
[1777],  and  made  a  present  of  them  to  Mr.  Thomp- 
son, who  now  presumes  most  humbly  to  lay  them  at 


H2  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

his  Majesty's  feet  [George  III.]  as  a  literary  as  well  as 
apolitical  curiosity." 

While  the  war  was  in  progress,  Mr.  Thompson 
was  brought  into  constant  and  intimate  relations  with 
the  refugees  or  loyalists  who  had  sought  in  England 
for  protection  against  popular  indignation  and  violence 
in  this  country,  which  steadily  increased  with  the  ex- 
asperation excited  by  every  new  measure  of  hostility 
adopted  by  the  mother  country.  Being  himself  so  well 
provided  for,  and  in  a  situation  of  influence,  where  his 
patronage  was  effective,  he  undoubtedly  found  his  posi- 
tion in  this  respect  one  of  embarrassment  and  annoy- 
ance. There  were  several  centres  in  England  where 
these  refugees  gathered  for  companionship  and  mutual 
comfort.  Bristol  sheltered  very  many  of  them,  but 
London  was  the  place  of  their  thickest  concourse.  The 
condition  of  most  of  the  exiles  was  deplorable  in  the 
extreme,  and  many  of  the  more  magnanimous  of  them 
learned  abroad  a  true  love  for  their  native  country  by 
suffering  for  it,  if  in  another  way,  hardly  any  less  in 
feeling  than  they  would  have  suffered  had  they  re- 
mained exposed  to  the  dislike  and  gibes  of  their  own 
fellow-citizens.  Such  of  these  refugees  as  had  no  means 
of  their  own  and  no  wealthy  friends  —  the  case  with  all 
but  a  very  few  of  them  —  beset  the  home  government 
with  their  piteous  appeals  for  aid,  and  the  overburdened 
treasury  was  drawn  upon  for  pensions  and  gratuities  to 
keep  them  from  starvation.  Every  one  of  them  who 
could  establish  a  claim  for  any  loss  incurred  by  his 
loyalty  on  this  side  of  the  water  was  eager  to  press 
his  demands.  In  one  year  the  grants  made  to  them 
amounted  to  some  <£  80,000.  At  the  close  of  the  war, 

*  Collections  of  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  3d  Series,  Vol.  VIII.  pp.  278,  279. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  113 

under  the  constraints  of  ministerial  reform  and  economy, 
this  sum  had  shrunk  to  £38,000,  and  many  of  the 
exiles  were  compelled  to  face  the  alternative  of  returning 
to  America  to  meet  the  humor  of  their  now  independent 
countrymen,  or  of  remaining  under  humiliating  circum- 
stances amid  equally  unsympathizing  people  in  Eng- 
land. So  far  as  the  relations  between  these  refugees 
and  Mr.  Thompson  can  be  traced,  I  find  no  evi- 
dence that  he  failed  to  do,  in  any  case,  what  duty  and 
friendliness  required  of  him.  If'  there  was  a  "seeming 
exception  to  this  in  a  case  now  to  be  mentioned,  it  is 
very  easy  to  relieve  the  imputation. 

One  of  the  most  forlorn  and  disconsolate  of  these 
exiles  was  Samuel  Curwen,  of  Salem,  Massachusetts, 
who  had  been  a  Deputy  Judge  of  Admiralty  and  Pro- 
vincial Impost  Officer  in  the  service  of  the  crown,  as 
well  as  a  county  magistrate  for  thirty  years.  He  had 
abundant  property,  but,  being  obnoxious  for  lack  of 
spirit  or  confidence,  on  the  breaking  out  of  hostilities 
he  had  fled  to  Philadelphia,  and  from  thence  had  sailed 
to  England,  remaining  there  through  the  war,  but  re- 
turning here  unmolested  at  its  close.  He  was  a  refined 
and  sensitive  man,  desponding  over  his  separation  from 
wife  and  home  and  his  fear  of  want,  as  he  had  reached 
the  borders  of  old  age.  He  received  a  gratuity  of  a 
hundred  pounds,  and  was  put  on  the  Treasury  list  for  an 
annual  pension  of  the  same  amount. 

The  following  extracts  from  Judge  Curwen's  journal 
have  an  interest  in  themselves  in  connection  with  Mr. 
Thompson.*  Having  chosen  his  residence  in  London,' 
where  he  was  intent  to  hear  all  the  feverish  rumors  of 

*  The  Journal  and   Letters  of  Samuel  Curwen,  &c.     By  George  Atkinson  Ward. 
4th  edition.     Boston,  1864. 

8 


H4  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

each  day  on  the  war,  he  writes  under  date  of  November 
14,  1780:  — 

"  Arriving  at  home,  William  Cabot  drank  tea  with  me,  S. 
Sparhawk  came  in  afterwards,  and  abode  two  hours ;  from  whom 
I  heard  the  first  account  of  Arnold's  intentional  withdrawing 
himself  and  four  or  five  thousand  troops  under  his  command 
from  Congressional  service  to  the  Royal  standard  at  New 
York,  the  failure  of  this  scheme  of  treachery,  and  his  lucky 
escape  from  his  enemies'  hands.  From  him  also  the  relation  of 
the  seizure  of  Mr.  Laurens's  papers,  late  President  of  the  Con- 
gress, and  now  a  prisoner  in  the  Tower  ;  giving  an  account  of 
the  desperate  situation  of  their  affairs,  with  complaints  of  failure 
of  their  resources,  and  their  inability  to  support  the  war  any  longer 
without  loans  from  Holland,  France,  or  Spain.  The  above 
comes  from  Benjamin  Thompson,  a  native  o-f  Massachusetts, 
(formerly  an  apprentice  to  my  next-door  neighbor  in  Salem, 
Mr.  John  Appleton,  an  importer  of  British  goods,)  now  Under- 
secretary in  the  American  Department." 

Curwen  records  next  year,  April  19,  an  unsuccessful 
attempt  to  call  on  Mr.  Thompson  at  his  lodgings,  Pall 
Mall.  On  May  23  he  writes  :  — 

"On  returning  home,  found  a  letter  from  Arthur  Savage, 
informing  me  of  Mr.  Thompson's  compliments  and  wish  to  see 
me  at  eleven  o'clock  to-morrow  at  his  lodgings. 

"May  24  [1781]. — Went  early,  in  order  to  be  at  Mr.  Benja- 
min Thompson's  in  time,  and  being  a  little  before,  heard  he  was 
not  returned  from  Lord  George  Germaine's,  where  he  always 
breakfasts,  dines,  and  sups,  so  great  a  favorite  is  he.  To  kill 
half  an  hour,  I  loitered  to  the  Park  through  the  Palace,  and  on 
second  return  found  him  at  his  lodgings  ;  he  received  me  in  a 
friendly  manner,  taking  me  by  the  hand,  talked  with  great  free- 
dom, and  promised  to  remember  and  serve  me  in  the  way  I 
proposed  to  him  [probably  the  securing  the  continuance  of 
his  allowance  unreduced].  Promises  are  easily  made,  and 
genteel  delusive  encouragement,  the  staple  article  of  trade,  be- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  115 

longing  to  the  courtier's  profession.  I  put  no  hopes  on  the 
fair  appearances  of  outward  behavior,  though  it  is  uncandid  to 
suppose  all  mean  to  deceive.  Some  wish  to  do  a  service  who 
have  it  not  in  their  power  ;  all  wish  to  be  thought  of  importance 
and  significancy,  and  this  often  leads  to  deceit.  This  young 
man,  when  a  shop-lad  to  my  next  neighbor,  ever  appeared 
active,  good-natured,  and  sensible ;  by  a  strange  concurrence  of 
events,  he  is  now  Under-Secretary  to  the  American  Secretary 
of  State,  Lord  George  Germaine,  a  Secretary  to  Georgia,  in- 
spector of  all  the  clothing  sent  to  America,  and  Lieutenant-Colo- 
nel Commandant  of  horse  dragoons  at  New  York  ;  his  income 
arising  from  these  sources  is,  I  have  been  told,  near  seven 
thousand  a  year,*  —  a  sum  infinitely  beyond  his  most  sanguine 
expectations.  He  is,  besides,  a  member  of  the  Royal  Society. 
It  is  said  he  is  of  an  ingenious  turn,  an  inventive  imagination, 
and,  by  being  on  one  cruise  in  Channel  Service  with  Sir  Charles 
Hardy,  has  formed  a  more  regular  and  better-digested  system 
for  signals  than  that  heretofore  used.  He  seems  to  be  of  a 
happy,  even  temper  in  general  deportment,  and  reported  of  an 
excellent  heart  ;  peculiarly  respectful  to  Americans  that  fall  in 
his  way." 

On  July  27,  and  on  August  3  and  4,  Judge  Curwen 
was  disappointed  in  his  attempts  to  find  Mr.  Thomp- 
son, either  at  his  lodgings  or  at  the  Treasury.  But  the 
following  entry  in  the  journal,  under  August  n,  indi- 
cates even  a  more  grievous  disappointment  when  he  did 
find  him  :  — 

"After  one  hour's  waiting,  admitted  to  Mr.  Thompson  in 
the  Plantation  Office  ;  he  seemed  inclined  to  shorten  the  inter- 
view, received  me  with  a  courtier's  smile,  rather  uncommunica- 
tive and  dry.  This  reception  has  damped  my  ill-grounded 
hopes,  derived  from  former  seeming  friendly  intentions  to  pro- 

*  It  is  hardly  probable  that  Major  Thompson  received  anything  like  the  sum 
above  named  as  his  annual  emolument.  Evidence  enough  will  appear  from  his  own 
pen  and  those  of  others,  in  the  following  pages,  that  he  was  neither  mercenary  nor 
avaricious.  He  never  was  lavish  in  expenditure  for  himself. 


n6  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

mote  my  views  ;  this,  my  first,  will  be  my  last  attempt  to  gain 
advantages  from  a  courtier  of  whom  I  never  entertained  favor- 
able impressions." 

The  Judge,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  dated  November 
25,  1781,  writes:  "  Our  townsman,  Mr.  Fisher,  holds 
a  quartered  precarious  office,  at,  I  fancy,  less  than  half 
its  real  income,  under,  and  returnable  to,  Mr.  Thomp- 
son, when  he  shall  come  back,  which  I  doubt  not  will 
be  in  the  spring  or  summer  following."  The  absence 
of  Mr.  Thompson  here  alluded  to  was  doubtless  on 
occasion  of  his  military  errand  to  America,  soon  to  be 
related.  Had  Judge  Curwen  been  the  only  applicant 
for  such  intercessory  help  as  his  favored  young  country- 
man was  known  to  be  able  to  extend^  no  doubt  he  would 
have  left  this  "  courtier "  in  better  humor.  But  the 
Under-Secretary  was  so  often  called  upon  for  similar 
favors  that  he  learned  to  put  his  handsome  features  in 
fitting  expression,  and  to  frame  avowals  and  promises 
which  had  their  fullest  meaning  for  the  eye  and  the  ear. 
It  was,  however,  a  trying  experience  for  the  venerable 
Salem  magistrate  thus  to  stand  before  the  "  shop-lad  " 
of  whom  he  may  once  have  purchased  soap  or  shoe- 
buckles. 

Another  of  the  more  distinguished  refugees  in  Lon- 
don who  was  very  intimate  with  Mr.  Thompson  was 
Dr.  Sylvester  Gardiner,  of  Boston.  Having  studied 
medicine  in  London  and  Paris,  he  was  established  here 
before  the  war  as  a  physician  and  druggist.  He  had 
acquired  immense  wealth,  and  was  honored  as  a  noble, 
public-spirited,  and  popular  man.  As  one  of  the  part-' 
ners  in  the  "  Plymouth  Purchase,"  so  called,  on  the 
Kennebec,  he  owned  one  twelfth  of  the  property,  and 
had  been  assiduous  and  enterprising  in  improving  and 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  .      117 

settling  it.  He  is  said  to  have  owned  a  hundred  thou- 
sand acres  in  Maine.  Being  in  close  social  intimacy 
with  the  royal  party  in  Boston  at  the  opening  of  hos- 
tilities, he  was  regarded  as  unfriendly  to  the  cause  of 
liberty.  Still  he  wished  to  remain  here  and  share  the  for- 
tunes of  his  countrymen.  He  would  have  done  so,  had 
not  a  young  wife  persuaded  him,  at  nearly  the  age  of 
.seventy,  to  go  off  with  the  British  forces  to  Halifax  at 
the  evacuation.  This  was,  of  course,  the  ruin  of  his 
fortunes  by  confiscation.  When  he  came  back  to  Bos- 
ton, in  1785,  to  try  to  reclaim  something  from  the 
wreck  by  a  petition  to  the  Legislature,  he  alleged  that 
on  his  forsaking  the  town  he  had  intentionally  left  for 
the  benefit  of  his  countrymen  in  their  need  a  very  full 
storehouse  of  drugs  and  medicines.  These  Washing- 
ton had  tried  to  appropriate  for  the  army,  but  the  sheriff 
of  Suffolk  got  the  start  of  him. 

Doubtless  Dr.  Gardiner  and  Mr.  Thompson  had 
been  acquainted  with  edch  other  here.  In  the  following 
reply  which  the  Under-Secretary  of  State  addressed  to 
this  impoverished  refugee,  the  "plan"  referred  to 'may 
concern  either  some  suggestion  for  the  conduct  of  the 
war,  or  for  providing  for  the  clamorous  demands  of 
the  loyalists,  who  had  to  take  the  Secretary's  office  on 
their  way  to  the  Treasury. 

"PALL  MALL  COURT,  Feby.  24,  1780. 

"DEAR  SIR,  —  I  return  you  many  thanks  for  the  excellent  plan 
you  have  been  so  good  as  to  send  me.  I  have  shown  it  to  my 
Lord  George  Germaine,  who  approves  of  it  very  much.  And  I 
am  directed  by  his  Lordship  to  return  you  his  thanks  for  the 
trouble  you  have  had  in  preparing  it.  He  is  fully  convinced  of 
its  utility,  and  would  be  very  glad  to  see  it  carried  into  execu- 
tion. 


1 1 8  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  I  am  sorry  to  inform  you  that  nothing  has  yet  been  done  at 
the  Treasury  respecting  your  Petition.  I  have  often  inquired 
after  it,  and  I  shall  continue  to  do  everything  in  my  power  to 
forward  it.  But  just  at  this  moment  their  Lordships  are  so 
extremely  busy  with  Parliamentary  matters  that  it  is  next  to 
impossible  to  get  them  to  attend  to  anything  else.  But  as  soon 
as  the  present  hurry  is  a  little  over,  I  would  hope  they  will  take 
the  Petitions  of  the  American  sufferers  into  consideration;  and 
you  may  rest  assured  that  your  Petition  will  be  among  the  very 
first  that  are  laid  before  them. 

"  I  am,  Dear  Sir,  with  great  regard  and  respect, 
"  Your  most  Obedient, 

"And  most  faithful,  humble  Servant, 

"B.  THOMPSON. 
"  DOCTOR  GARDINER." 

It  is  suggestive  to  think  of  Mr.  Thompson  as  hav- 
ing in  hand,  and  inquisitively  scanning,  the  official  pa- 
pers seized  with  Henry  Laurens,  the  late  President  of 
our  Congress,  when  he  was  captured,  in  the  summer 
of  1780,  by  a  British  frigate  near  Newfoundland,  on 
his  'way  to  Holland  as  our  Minister  Plenipotentiary. 
Laurens  was  then  in  the  Tower,  and  his  papers,  which 
he  had  thrown  overboard  on  his  capture,  but  which 
were  fished  up  by  a  seaman,  made  piteous  exposure  of 
the  needs  of  his  countrymen.  Thompson,  it  seerns, 
divulged  their  secrets.  He  was  soon  after  to  have  a 
meeting  with  Laurens  under  other  circumstances.  There 
were  many  curious  surprises  in  those  days,  which  re- 
quired that  Americans  meeting  in  Europe  should  keep 
full  command  of  courteous  manners. 

It  is  probably  safe  to  accept  the  reason  and  motive 
assigned  by  Cuvier  as  the  promptings  which  induced 
Mr.  Thompson  to  seek  active  military  service  in  the 
royal  army,  and  in  that  capacity  to  return  to  his  native 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  119 

country  to  fight,  as  he  had  already  counselled,  against 
her  cause  of  independence.  He  might  have  felt  the 
impulse,  whether  of  conviction,  self-respect,  or  the  plea 
of  consistency,  to  show  the  sincerity  of  the  course  he 
had  been  pursuing  in  the  quiet  of  his  official  bureau 
by  exposing  his  life  for  the  same  object,  and  thus  prov- 
ing that  he  was  a  loyal  and  grateful  subject  of  his  King. 
There  is  this,  however,  to  be  said  on  the  side  of  the  pos- 
sible magnanimity  of  his  conduct, — that  he  formed  the 
purpose  of  coming  here  in  command  as  an  officer  of 
the  British  army  at  the  very  darkest  and  most  hopeless 
stage  of  the  war  as  regarded  the  prospects  of  the  royal 
cause.  The  King  and  the  administration  had  been 
thwarted.  The  majority  in  Parliament  was  shifting 
against  them.  England  found  herself  involved  by  sea 
and  land  with  our  French  allies.  The  surrender  of 
Burgoyne,  to  be  soon  followed  by  the  capitulation  of 
Cornwallis,  had  discomfited  even  the  most  arrogant 
and  contemptuous  enemies  of  the  Colonies.  Exhaustive 
levies  and  reckless  appropriations  had  dispirited  the 
people,  and  held  up  to  them  the  prospective  burdens 
of  overwhelming  debt  and.  excessive  taxes.  The  subju- 
gation of  America  had  to  be  recognized  as  delusive, — 
as,  in  fact,  an  impossibility.  Whether  disappointment, 
stung  into  vengeance,  might  yet  inflict  a  few  more 
heavy  blows  against  the  opening  life  of  a  new  nation, 
or  whether  discord  might  be  introduced  among  its  con- 
stituent parts,  or,  finally,  whether  more  or  less  of  the 
territory  of  North  America  should  still  be  held  by  the 
crown,  were  as  yet  contingent.  Thompson's  political 
prospects  were  —  for  the  time,  at  least  —  identified  with 
those  of  his  head  and  patron,  Lord  G.  Germaine.  The 
latter  felt  that  the  last  hope  of  subjugating  the  Colonies 


I2O  Life  of  Count  Rumford* 

hung  upon  the  fate  of  Cornwallis.  Sir  M.  W.  Wraxall  * 
has  given  a  striking  sketch  of  the  incident  when  the 
news  of  the  Earl's  capitulation  on  October  19  was 
brought  to  the  Secretary,  with  whom  he  dined  on  the 
day  mentioned. 

u  On  Sunday  the  25th  [November],  about  noon,  official 
intelligence  of  the  surrender  of  the  British  forces  at  Yorktown 
arrived  from  Falmouth  at  Lord  George  Germaine's  house  in 
Pall  Mall.  Lord  Walshingham,  who  had  been  Under-Secre- 
tary  of  State  in  that  Department,  happened  to  be  there.  With- 
out communicating  it  to  any  other  person,  Lord  George,  for 
the  purpose  of  despatch,  immediately  got  with  him  into  a 
hackney  coach,  and  drove  to  Lord  Stormont's  residence  in 
Portland  Place.  Having  imparted  to  him  the  disastrous  infor- 
mation, and  taken  him  into  the  carriage,  they  instantly  pro- 
ceeded to  the  Chancellor's,  and,  on  consultation,  determined  to 
lay  it  before  Lord  North.  The  First  Minister's  firmness,  and 
even  his  presence  of  mind,  gave  way  for  a  short  time  under 
this  awful  disaster.  I  asked  Lord  George  afterwards  how  he 
took  the  communication.  c  As  he  would  have  taken  a  ball  in 
his  breast,'  replied  Lord  George.  c  For  he  opened  his  arms,  ex- 
claiming wildly,  as  he  paced  up  and  down  the  apartment  dur- 
ing a  few  minutes,  O  God  !  it  is  all  over  ! ' : 

Doubtless  Thompson  had  formed  strong  personal  rela- 
tions with  Lord  George,  from  such  close  intimacy  with 
him,  not  only  in  the  office,  but  at  his  house  in  Pall 
Mall,  and  in  frequent  visits  to  him  at  his  seat  at  Dray- 
ton.  Perhaps  Thompson  foresaw,  even  more  clearly 
than  many  others,  what  was  to  be  the  probable  issue  of 
the  struggle  in  America,  and  provided  for  himself  the 
alternative  which,  poor  as  it  proved,  we  are  soon  to  find 
him  accepting.  He  was  on  this  side  of  the  ocean  when, 
in  February,  1782,  the  forced  resignation  of  his  patron 

*  Historical  Memoirs  of  my  own  Time.     Vol.  II.  p.  99,  &c. 


Life  of  Coimt  Rumford.  121 

was  accepted,  as  a  temporary  dalliance  of  Lord  North 
with  his  own  fate,  which  was  to  be  a  little  longer  de- 
ferred. 

The  humiliations  which  successively  were  visited  on 
the  schemes  and  enterprises  of  the  ministry  reflected 
reproaches  upon  themselves  which  they  sought  to  shift 
upon  secretaries  and  subordinates,  as  having  been  in- 
competent blunderers.  Cuvier  says  —  and  Mr.  Thomp- 
son alone  could  have  been  a  qualified  informant — that, 
as  Under-Secretary  of  State  for  thirteen  months,  "  he 
had  been  disgusted  by  the  want  of  talent  displayed  by 
his  principal,  for  which  he  had  himself  not  unfrequently 
been  made  responsible."  It  was  too  much  to  expect 
that  the  ministry  and  their  secretaries,  who  had  con- 
ducted the  war,  should  be  the  agents  for  devising  and 
ratifying  terms  of  peace.  Interest,  therefore,  was  con- 
centrated upon  the  Cabinet,  with  the  knowledge  that  a 
rupture  there  could  alone  bring  the  problem  to  a  solu- 
tion. When  the  mortifying  intelligence  of  what  had 
occurred  at  Yorktown  and  Gloucester  reached  England, 
king  and  ministry  still  stood  by  each  other,  and  the 
majority  in  Parliament  still  confirmed  their  policy, 
though  with  a  halting  decision.  But  the  opposition  in 
Parliament  made  Lord  George  the  target  of  their 
assaults,  as  it  was  within  his  Department  that  the  meas- 
ures which  had  proved  so  impotent  in  the  direction  of 
Colonial  affairs  had  been  administered.  The  Premier, 
Lord  North,  abandoned  him,  and  he  resigned,  —  receiv- 
ing, however,  some  special  marks  of  the  King's  favor  in 
pensions  and  a  peerage.  Viscount  Sackville,  as  he  was 
now  entitled,  had,  in  his  turn,  in  foresight  of  his  resig- 
nation, an  opportunity  to  reward  so  faithful  a  friend 
as  he  had  found  in  his  Under-Secretary.  Accordingly 


122  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Major  Thompson,  who  had  always  clung  to  that  title, 
though  its  provincial  commission  gave  him  no  rank  in 
the  regular  army,  was  now  honored  with  the  commis- 
sion, in  the  British  army,  of  a  Lieutenant-Colonel.  It 
was  to  forces  already  organized,  or  in  fragmentary 
bodies  supposed  to  admit  of  being  rallied  into  new 
vigor,  in  America,  that  Thompson's  commission  ap- 
plied. His  pay  was  24  s.  6d.  per  diem. 

But  the  officer,  though  at  the  age  of  twenty-eight 
not  yet  a  veteran,  wished  for,  and  meant  to  do,  full 
military  duty.  He  needed  a  command.  Where  should 
he  find  a  regiment  ?  He  provided  for  himself,  and 
resolved  to  secure  a  following  from  those  who,  in  his 
native  land,  had  willingly  espoused  the  cause  of  the 
King  against  their  own  country.  They  called  them- 
selves loyal  Americans.  For  the  most  part  they  were  a 
sorry  company,  the  most  desperate  and  hated  in  their 
mode  of  warfare  and  in  their  subserviency,  and  the 
bitterest  sufferers  in  the  wreck  of  the  cause  to  which, 
in  principle  or  in  malignity,  as  the  case  may  have  been, 
they  had  given  themselves.  The  ranks  of  the  "  Loyal 
American  Regiments,"  gathered  in  full  or  only  in  a 
skeleton  form  in  New  York  and  in  the  Southern  Prov- 
inces, were  held  to  the  royal  side  by  a  very  slender 
allegiance,  influenced  in  part  by  fear,  and  in  part  by 
the  stronger  attraction  of  pay  in  English  coin  above 
that  of  a  paper  currency.  They,  however,  found  it 
very  easy  to  shift  to  the  American  side;  and  perhaps  a 
majority  of  them  had  been  so  impartial  as  to  serve  in 
the  course  of  the  war  with  equal  merit,  principle,  and 
efficiency  in  both  armies. 

Yet  it  was  not  so  easy  for  the  officers  of  these  regi- 
ments of  loyalists  to  pass  from  one  side  to  the  other. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  123 

For  them  consistency  and  notoriety  were  pledges  that 
they  might  perform  acceptable  service.  Their  self- 
committal  gave  them  a  claim  to  royal  gratitude  to  be 
met  only  by  exchanging  their  provincial  commissions 
for  others  which  should  raise  them  to  and  confirm  them 
in  honorable  positions  in  the  regular  army  of  Great 
Britain,  with  opportunities  for  promotion,  pay,  half- 
pay,  and  pensions  accordingly. 

Thompson  himself  said  that  he  "went  out  to  America 
to  command  a  regiment  of  cavalry  which  he  had  raised 
in  that  country  for  the  King's  service."  But  little 
could  be  done  in  England  for  that  enterprise,  except 
the  procuring  of  commissions  and  funds.  The  work 
was  to  be  accomplished  here,  and  Thompson  essayed  it. 

True  to  his  devotion  to  scientific  experiment  in  the 
subject  which  he  had  investigated  from  his  boyhood, 
Thompson  so  far  redeemed  what  in  our  eyes  must  be 
regarded  as  the  inglorious  purpose  of  his  sea  voyage. 
He  says :  — 

"  His  Majesty  having  been  graciously  pleased  to  permit  me 
to  take  out  with  me  from  England  four  pieces  of  light  artillery, 
constructed  under  the  direction  of  the  late  Lieutenant-General 
Desaguliers,  with  a  large  proportion  of  ammunition,  I  made  a 
great  number  of  interesting  experiments  with  these  guns,  and 
also  with  the  ship's  guns  on  board  the  ships  of  war  in  which  I 
made  my  passage  to  and  from  America."  | 

Pictet  gives  us  the  following  account  from  his  friend's 
confidential  communication  of  this  incident  in  his  life:  — 

"  The  regiment  of  cavalry  called  the  King's  American  Dra- 
goons was  raised  at  this  time  in  his  native  country  by  his 
friends  and  agents,  and  he  was  then  commissioned  as  its  Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Commandant.  This  circumstance  led  him  to 

*  Essay  on  Gunpowder.  f   Ibid. 


124  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

leave  England  for  a  return  to  America  to  serve  with  his  regi- 
ment. He  had  intended  to  land  at  New  York,  but  contrary 
winds  compelled  him  to  disembark  at  Charleston  [South  Carolina]. 
Obliged  to  pass  the  winter  there,  he  was  made  commander  of 
the  remains  of  the  cavalry  in  the  royal  army  which  was  then 
under  the  orders  of  Lieutenant-General  Leslie.  This  corps 
was  broken  up,  and  he  promptly  restored  it  and  won  the 
confidence  and  attachment  of  the  commander.  He  led  them 
often  against  the  enemy,  and  was  always  successful  in  his 
enterprises. 

"  That  which  is  called  good  fortune  and  success  in  war  is 
achieved  amid  many  scenes  deeply  saddening  for  a  kind  heart. 
The  sort  of  engagements  to  which  he  was  drawn  multiplied 
these  harrowing  scenes.  It  was  a  war  of  posts  and  a  civil  war 
at  the  same  time.  So  there  was  much  of  danger  and  fatigue 
with  little  glory,  and  the  spectacle  of  a  people  reduced  to 
desolation  and  despair.  Such  was  his  position  at  that  time.  I 
have  seen  his  eyes  filled  with  tears  when  he  told  me  certain 
anecdotes  relating  to  those  times  and  to  his  military  career.  A 
German  painter  has  undertaken  to  represent  one  of  these  scenes, 
which  makes  one  shudder,  and  which  I  have  not  now  heart  or 
time  to  describe  to  you." 

Pictet  would  seem  in  this  last  sentence  to  refer  to 
some  picture  shown  him  by  his  friend,  then  Count 
Rumford,  drawn  by  description  and  narrative  furnished 
by  the  latter  to  some  German  artist.  I  have  been  the 
more  ready  to  quote  the  sentiment  which  the  Swiss 
friend  connects  with  his  statement  of  facts,  because, 
though  it  may  be  a  little  overstrained,  I  should  be  glad 
to  believe  that  the  larger  part  of  it  was  to  be  credited 
to  Pictet's  informant.  There  were  indeed  some  pe- 
culiarly sad  and  harrowing  circumstances  connected  with 
the  desultory  warfare  in  our  Southern  Provinces;  but 
I  have  not  been  able  to  identify  Colonel  Thompson  as 
an  actor -in,  or  even  as  a  spectator  of,  many  of  them. 


Life  of  Count  Rinnford.  125 

Neither  have  I  succeeded  further  than  in  approxi- 
mating to  the  dates  at  which  Thompson  sailed  from 
England  and  arrived  at  Charleston.  It  was  undoubtedly 
stress  of  weather  which  carried  him  thither,  rather  than 
to  Long  Island,  New  York,  where  the  remnant  of  the 
corps  of  dragoons  which  he  was  to  command  was  quar- 
tered. Curwen,  as  we  have  seen,  writes  of  having  had 
an  interview  with  Thompson  in  London,  August  n, 
1781,  and  then  writes  of  him  as  absent  under  date 
of  November  25,  1781.  Between  these  dates,  proba- 
bly about  October  4,  Thompson,  who  had  before  re- 
ceived his  commission,  had  left  England.  He  was  in 
Charleston  early  in  January,  1782.  He  has  left,  how- 
ever, but  faint  traces  of  his  visit  there,  and  but  one 
signal  event  of  the  many  which  Pictet  reports  is  at- 
tached to  his  name. 

The  following  brief  extracts  from  American  papers 
of  the  time,  published  on  the  royal  side,  help  us  to  a 
few  facts  relating  to  Colonel  Thompson  :  *  — 

Rivington's  New  York  Gazette,  January  5,  1782.  — 
"  The  British  fleet  of  forty-odd  sail,  under  convoy  of  the  Rotter- 
dam, of  50  guns,  Astrea,  32,  and  Duke  de  Chartres,  16,  with 
Lord  Dunmore,  destined  for  this  port,  was  safe  arrived  at 
Charleston." 

January  9.  — "  The  Quebec  [which  left  Cork,  the  great 
depot  for  provisions,  October  29]  a  convoy  has  anchored 
in  New  York  Harbor.  They  left  the  Rotterdam  and  Astrea's 
fleet  of  victuallers  and  store-ships,  &c.  at  Charleston,  where 
they  arrived  from  Cork  ten  days  before  the  Quebec  convoy  got 
thither." 

New  York  Mercury,  January  16,  1782." — "The  fleet  which 
sailed  from  this  port  for  South  Carolina,  25th  ult.,  was  seen  on 

*  I  am  indebted  to  the  kindness  of  Mr.  Henry  Onderdonk,  Jr.,  of  Jamaica,  L.  I., 
in  communicating  to  me  these  extracts. 


126  Life  of  Count  R^lmford. 

the  4th    inst.,  by  his   Majesty's    frigate    Blond,    since    arrived  ' 
here,  off  Cape  Fear,  with  a  favorable  wind  for  Charleston. 

"  On  Sunday  last  arrived  his  Majesty's  Ship  Rotterdam, 
James  Knowles,  Esq.,  commander,  which  sailed  from  Charles- 
ton the  same  day  the  Blond  left  it.  Colonel  Thompson,  of  the 
King's  American  Dragoons,  late  Under-Secretary  of  State  for 
the  American  Department,  and  a  number  of  gentlemen  of  rank, 
who  came  passengers  in  the  above-mentioned  ship,  remain  at 
Charleston." 

Rivington,  January  19,  1782.  — "  We  are  informed  that 
Lord  Dunmore  had  a  grand  reception  at  Charleston,  on  his 
arrival  there." 

Supposing  Thompson  to  have  arrived  in  Charleston 
on  or  before  January  i,  we  might  infer  that  he  did  not 
leave  England  until  after  the  news  had  arrived  there 
of  Cornwallis's  surrender,  if  Curwen  had  not  written  of 
him  as  absent  on  the  same  date  referred  to  in  the  extract 
given  above  from  Wraxall.  At  any  rate,  Thompson 
must  have  learned  at  once,  as  he  landed  on  this  conti- 
nent, that  the  war  waging  here  by  Great  Britain  was 
rather  a  defensive  than  an  offensive  one. 

Tarleton,  in  his  History  of  the  Campaigns  of  1780 
and  1781  in  the  Southern  Provinces,  does  not  come  far 
enough  down  to  cover  his  presence.  In  the  autumn  of 
1781  the  remnant  of  the  British  army  in  the  South  had 
been  driven  by  Greene  into  Charleston,  South  Carolina. 
There,  and  at  Savannah  and  on  John's  Island,  —  the  only 
places  in  the  region  left  in  their  possession,  and  these 
too  held  by  the  aid  of  vessels,  —  the  British  forces  were 
hemmed  in  and  found  it  difficult  to  hold  their  ground. 
Their  discomfiture  had  rallied  the  hopes  of  the  patriots. 
Hundreds  of  halting,  time-serving  waiters  on  the  for- 
tunes of  the  war,  within  the  former  British  lines,  now 
put  themselves  under  the  protection  of  the  Legislature 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  127 

which  was  convened  at  Jacksonborough  by  Governor 
Rutledge.  This  was  watched  over  by  Greene's  advance. 
General  Leslie,  the  British  commander  at  Charleston, 
baffled  in  all  his  enterprises,  was  at  his  wits'  end,  and 
had  reason  to  apprehend  starvation,  the  main  security 
against  which  was  to  be  found  in  successful  inroads  into 
the  country.  In  vain  did  he  issue  his  proclamations  to 
rally  Tories  and  provisions.  He  must  have  welcomed 
the  weather-bound  new-comer  who  told  Pictet  that  he 
made  himself  so  serviceable.  By  a  bold  movement  in 
January,  1782,  Major  Craig,  who  with  a  small  British 
force  was  in  command  on  John's  Island,  was  driven 
into  Charleston  by  a  body  of  Greene's  army,  with  the 
loss  of  a  few  prisoners  and  stores.  Becoming  desperate 
in  their  need  of  supplies,  in  a  skirmish  on  one  of  their 
sorties  they  had  been  repulsed  by  Marion's  Brigade 
near  Monk's  Corner.  Marion,  soon  after  filling  his 
seat  in  the  Legislature,  left  his  brigade  in  command  of 
Colonel  Horrey.  An  attack  was  made  upon  htm  by  a 
larger  force  under  Colonel  Thompson,  near  the  Santee, 
and  though  Marion  came  in  season  to  take  part  in  the 
action,  he  had  the  mortification  of  witnessing  the  dis- 
comfiture of  his  little  band  with  the  loss  of  men  and 
munitions.  This  is  the  only  conspicuous  action  which 
our  own  historian  has  credited  to  Thompson  while  at 
the  South. * 

A  few  other  brief  extracts  from  Rivington,  contain- 
ing information  collected  from  ports  below  New  York, 
contain  for  us  hints  of  Thompson's  activity. 

Under  date  February  18  :  "A  detachment  of  the  royal  Ameri- 
cans went  on  service,  supposed  against  Greene." 

*  Memoirs  of  the  War  in  the  Southern  Department  of  the  United  States.  By 
Henry  Lee.  Washington,  1827.  p.  397. 


128  Life  of  Count  Rumford.. 

Richmond,  March  9.  —  "A  person  who  left  the  Southern 
army,  February  13,  says  Lieutenant-Colonel  Thompson  has 
taken  command  of  the  British  cavalry  under  Colonel  Leslie." 

Philadelphia,  March  27.  — "  A  considerable  force  of  cav- 
alry and  infantry,  commanded  by  Colonel  Thompson,  sallied  out 
from  Charleston  on  the  side  opposite  the  American  camp,  and 
surprised  and  dispersed  a  party  of  militia  on  Feb.  24  and 
25.  The  British  retreated  before  Greene  could  send  re- 
inforcements." 

Charleston,  March  2.  —  "  Lieutenant-Colonel  Thompson  moved 
on  Sunday,  Feb.  24,  from  Daniel's  Island,  with  the  cavalry,  Cun- 
ningham's and  Young's  troops  of  mounted  militia,  Yagers,  and 
volunteers  of  Ireland,  with  one  three-pounder,  and  a  detach- 
ment of  the  Thirtieth  Regiment.  By  the  spirited  exertions  of 
his  troops,  and  by  the  Colonel's  mounting  the  infantry  occasion- 
ally on  the  dragoon  horses,  he  carried  his  corps  thirty-six  miles 
without  halting.  [Having  secured  the  American  scouts  to  pre- 
vent information  being  given.]  He  drove  in  Horrey's  regiment. 
They  were  pursued  by  Major  Doyle  with  mounted  militia.  On 

seeing  the  enemy,  Colonel  T sounded  a  charge  and  dashed 

forwards.  Marion's  marque  and  men  refreshed  our  soldiers. 
Colonel  T marched  back,  driving  the  cattle,  &c.  The  ad- 
mirable conduct  of  the  officer  who  commanded  can  only  be 
equalled  by  the  spirit  with  which  his  orders  were  executed." 
(Rivington,  April  17.) 

"  This  series  of  actions  took  place  at  Warnham  Bridge,  and 
at  Tydeman's  house." 

In  the  war  of  posts,  of  desultory  skirmishes,  and  of 
inroads  into  the  farming  regions  for  plunder,  to  which 
the  struggle  at  the  South  was  reduced,  there  was  indeed 
little  opportunity  for  Thompson  to  win  laurels.  He 
undoubtedly  made  use  of  his  energetic  and  methodical 
skill  in  doing  what  he  could  to  organize  and  discipline 
such  unpromising  materials  as  he  had  before  him.  It 
is  to  be  remembered  that  he  was  only  accidentally  on 
the  spot,  and  had  no  permanent  command  there.  The 


•  Life  of  Count  Rumford.  129 

dragoons  at  the  head  of  which  he  intended  to  place  him- 
self, or  rather  that  remnant  of  the  corps  which  escaped 
coming  under  the  full  terms  of  the  capitulation  at  York- 
town,  were  on  Long  Island,  New  York,  awaiting  his 
coming.  As  to  the  pathetic  scenes  which  Thompson 
was  called  to  witness,  and  at  the  narration  of  which,  in 
the  Frenchman's  rehearsal,  he  wept,  he  might  have 
seen  similar  ones  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  before  he 
left  his  native  country.  No  doubt  there  were  enough 
of  them,  and  they  were  harrowing  enough  to  distress 
one  of  a  philanthropic  heart.  But  without  meaning  to 
intimate  that  there  was  any  exaggeration  in  the  reference 
to  so  many  peculiarly  distressing  incidents,  I  feel  re- 
lieved in  avowing  that  in  faithfully  searching  after  the 
real  occurrences  which  they  imply  I  have  been  unsuc- 
cessful in  finding  them. 

Charleston  was  evacuated  December  14,  lylte,  but 
before  that  event  had  taken  place,  and  in  the  middle  of 
the  spring  of  that  year,  Thompson  had  sailed  for  New 
York.  What  Pictet  received  from  his  own  lips  is  to  be 
inferred  from  the  following  report  of  it:  *  — 

"  Honored  with  the  esteem  of  the  army,  and  with  the  most 
flattering  recommendations  from  General  Leslie  for  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief,  Thompson  started  in  the  spring  of  1782  for 
New  York,  where  he  took  the  command  of  his  regiment.  Prince 
William  Henry,  Duke  of  Clarence,  third  son  of  the  King,  who 
reviewed  his  corps,  committed  the  colors  to  him  with  his  own 
hand.  General  Clinton  was  succeeded  towards  autumn  by 
Carlton,  who  also  extended  to  Thompson  his  friendship  and 
confidence.  He  gathered  into  his  corps  the  feeble  remains  of 
two  regiments  which  had  been  engaged  through  the  war,  and 
was  sent  to  Huntington,  an  advanced  post  of  the  army  on  Long 
Island,  where  he  passed  the  winter." 

*  Bibliotheque  Britannique.     Vol.  XX. 

9 


130  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

I  am  able  to  fill  up  with  some  interesting  details  what 
M.  Pictet  presents  in  this  condensed  form.  Doubtless 
Thompson  showed  to  his  friend  the  commendatory 
document  from  General  Leslie,  as  he  did  the  originals 
of  other  papers.  The  order  issued  from  Leslie's  head- 
quarters, as  given  in  Rivington's  Gazette,  is  as  follows :  — 

"  DAVIS  HOUSE,  March  i,  1782. 

"  Lieutenant-General  Leslie  desires  Lieutenant-Colonel 
Thompson  and  the  officers  and  soldiers  of  the  cavalry  and 
infantry  who  served  under  his  command  will  accept  his  best 
thanks  for  the  services  performed  by  them  on  the  late  expedition. 
The  Lieutenant-General  cannot  too  truly  express  to  the  army 
the  opinion  he  entertains  of  the  merit  of  Lieutenant-Colonel 
Thompson's  conduct  upon  the  occasion,  and  of  the  spirited 
behavior  of  the  troops.  The  constancy  with  which  they 
supported  the  fatigues  of  a  long  and  very  rapid  march  claims 
his  approbation,  no  less  than  their  exertions  in  presence  of  the 
enemy." 

Under  date  of  April  13,  1782,  Rivington  announces  :  — 

"  New  York.  —  On  Thursday  arrived  from  South  Carolina, 
the  Earl  of  Dunmore,  Colonel  Thompson,  who  lately  effected  a 
successful  attack  upon  the  Rebels  in  South  Carolina,  and  many 
other  officers  of  the  army  arrived  in  town  from  thence  on  Tues- 
day evening  and  yesterday." 

The  New  York  Mercury  of  April  16  gives  this  an- 
nouncement :  — 

"  Thursday  last,  arrived  at  Sandy  Hook,  in  ten  days  from 
Charleston,  South  Carolina,  a  fleet  of  forty-five  sail,  of  navy  and 
army  victuallers  (most  of  which  arrived  at  that  place  last  fall  from 
Europe),  under  convoy  of  his  Majesty's  ships  Carysfort,  Duke  de 
Chartres,  Astrea,  Charlestown,  and  Grana.  When  the  fleet  left 
Charleston,  the  garrison  was  very  healthy  and  well  supplied 
with  all  sorts  of  provisions.  General  Greene,  with  an  army  of 
about  two  thousand  men,  being  at  thirty  miles'  distance.  In  the 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  131 

fleet  came  passengers,  his  Excellency  the  Earl  of  Dunmore, 
Governor  of  Virginia,  Colonels  Small  and  Thompson,  and  sev- 
eral other  gentlemen  of  high  rank." 

It  would  be  agreeable  to  be  able  to  recognize  here 
any  effort  made  by  Colonel  Thompson  to  communicate 
with  the  members  of  his  own  family,  or  even  with  his 
friend  Baldwin,  in  New  Hampshire  or  Massachusetts, 
now  that  he  was  again  so  near  them.  I  cannot  say  that 
he  did  not  make  such  an  effort,  but  I  have  been  unable 
to  find  any  trace  or  token  of  it.  The  attempt  would 
have  been  attended  with  difficulties,  though  these  were 
by  no  means  insurmountable.  Constant  intercourse 
was  kept  up  across  Long  Island  Sound  between  the 
British  troops  in  New  York,  and  neutrals,  loyalist  sym- 
pathizers, and  time-servers  in  Connecticut,  and  con- 
trivance and  money  would  have  effected  the  object  had 
it  been  one  of  strong  desire.  I  am  forced  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  Thompson  was  either  indifferent  to  or  alien- 
ated from  his  family.  But  of  this  something  more  will 
be  said  in  another  connection. 

It  is  somewhat  derogatory  to  the  fair  fame  of  Thomp- 
son, to  have  to  connect  him  with  the  following  recruit- 
ing bulletin  for  filling  up  the  thinned  ranks  of  his  com- 
mand. 

In  Rivington's  Royal  Gazette,  for  July  24,  1782,  we 
find  this  tempting  advertisement  for  attracting  recruits 
for  the  cc  King's  American  Dragoons." 

"  Any  likely  and  spirited  young  lads  who  are  desirous  of  dis- 
tinguishing themselves  by  serving  their  King  and  country,  and 
who  prefer  riding  on  horseback  to  going  on  foot,  have  an  oppor- 
tunity of  gratifying  their  inclinations  :  ten  guineas  to  volunteers, 
or  five  to  any  one  who  brings  a  recruit,  and  five  to  the  recruit. 
For  the  convenience  of  those  who  may  come  from  the  continent 


132  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

by  the  way  of  Lloyd's  Neck,  an  officer  will  constantly  remain 
at  that  post." 

The  particulars  which  fidelity  to  the  truth  of  history 
now  requires  to  be  set  forth  as  they  appear  in  our 'local 
annals,  though  they  do  not  add  to,  but  must  be  re- 
garded as  detracting  from,  the  repute  of  our  distin- 
guished countryman,  may  still  be  found  to  possess  an 
interest  in  themselves.  Pictet's  gush  of  sentiment, 
original  or  sympathetic,  can  hardly  be  considered  as 
giving  them  any  dignity.  Colonel  Thompson,  how- 
ever, is  entitled  to  the  benefit  of  the  suggestion  already 
intimated,  that  the  military  operations  of  Great  Britain 
in  this  country  at  the  time  were  continued  certainly 
without  any  hope  of,  and  possibly  without  much  reference 
to,  the  subjugation  of  the  Colonies.  Through  her  war 
against  us  England  had  become  involved  in  hostilities 
with  the  Continental  powers  of  Europe,  which  made  the 
ocean  perilous  for  her  naval  armaments  and  transports, 
and  threatened  her  other  colonial  possessions.  It  is  there- 
fore possible  that  Colonel  Thompson  may  at  this  period 
have  felt  that  he  was  serving  his  King  and  government 
in  a  cause  which  did  not  necessarily  involve  further  dis- 
tress for  his  native  country. 

Mr.  Henry  Onderdonk,  Jr.,  in  his  laborious  and 
miscellaneous  gatherings  for  illustrating  historical  inci- 
dents connected  with  the  war  on  Long  Island,  gives  me 
valuable  aid  in  tracing  Colonel  Thompson  in  this  part 
of  his  inglorious  campaign.* 

*  Documents  and  Letters  intended  to  illustrate  the  Revolutionary  Incidents  of 
Queen's  County  ;  with  connecting  Narratives,  explanatory  Notes  and  Additions.  By 
Henry  Onderdonk,  Jr.  New  York,  1846.  Also,  Revolutionary  Incidents  of 
Suffolk  and  Kings'  Counties ;  with  an  Account  of  the  Battle  of  Long  Island,  &c. 
By  Henry  Onderdonk,  Jr.  New  York,  1849.  These  are  volumes  of  great  value 
and  interest  to  the  historical  student.  The  quotations  in  the  text  are  made  from 
pp.  149,  150,  of  the  former  book,  and  from  pp.  107,  261  -  264  of  the  latter. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  133 

\ 

Mr.  Onderdonk  makes  the  following  extract  from 
Rivington's  Royal  Gazette,  of  August  7,  1782,  —  a 
journal  printed  in  New  York  while  it  was  occupied  by 
the  British  army  :  — 

"  Presentation  of  colors,  Thursday,  August  I,  to  the  King's 
American  Dragoons,  under  Colonel  Benjamin  Thompson,  at 
camp,  about  three  miles  east  of  Flushing,  consisting  of  four 
complete  troops  mounted,  and  two  dismounted.  The  regiment 
was  formed  on  advantageous  ground  in  front  of  the  encamp- 
ment, having  a  gentle  declivity  to  the  south,  with  two  pieces  of 
light  artillery  on  the  right.  About  sixty  yards  in  front  of  the 
regiment  was  a  canopy  twenty  feet  high,  supported  by  ten  pil- 
lars. East  of  which  was  a  semicircular  bower  for  the  accom- 
modation of  spectators.  The  standards  were  planted  under  the 
canopy. 

"  At  one  o'clock  the  Prince,  with  Admiral  Digby,  General 
Birch,  Hon.  Lieutenant-Colonel  Fox,  of  38th,  and  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  Small  of  84th,  and  other  officers  of  distinction,  came 
on  the  ground,  and  received  the  usual  salutes  (the  trumpets 
sounding  and  the  music  playing  'God  save  the  King!'),  and 
posted  themselves  in  the  canopy.  The  regiment  passed  in 
review  before  the  Prince,  performing  marching  salutes.  They 
then  returned,  dismounted,  and  formed  in  a  semicircle  in  front 
of  the  canopy.  Their  chaplain,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Odell,  delivered 
an  appropriate  address.  After  which  the  whole  regiment,  offi- 
cers and  men,  kneeled  and  laid  their  helmets  and  arms  on  the 
ground,  held  up  their  right  hands,  and  took  a  most  solemn  oath 
of  allegiance  to  their  sovereign  and  fidelity  to  their  standard,  the 
whole  repeating  the  oath  together.  The  chaplain  then  pro- 
nounced a  solemn  benediction.  The  regiment  rose,  and  returned 
to  their  ground,  and  fired  a  royal  salute.  They  then  mounted, 
and  saluted  the  standard  together.  As  soon  as  the  consecrating 
and  saluting  the  standard  was  over,  the  Prince  came  forward  to 
the  centre  of  the  regiment,  received  the  colors  from  Admiral 
Digby,  and  presented  them  with  his  own  hand  to  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  Thompson,  who  delivered  them  to  the  eldest  cornets. 


134-  Life  of  Count  Rumfjrd. 

On  a  given  signal  the  whole  regiment,  with  all  the  numerous 
spectators,  gave  three  shouts,  the  music  played  '  God  save  the 
King  ! '  the  artillery  fired  a  royal  salute,  and  the  ceremony  was 
ended." 

The  scion  of  royalty  who  officiated  on  this  rather  de- 
monstrative than  brilliant  occasion  was  his  Royal  High- 
ness Prince  William  Henry,  the  King's  third  son,  aged 
nearly  seventeen,  afterwards  King  William  IV.  He 
had  sailed  on  board  the  Prince  George,  under  Admiral 
Digby,  to  qualify  himself  for  rank  in  the  Royal  Navy. 

An  ox  was  roasted  whole,  to  grace  this  occasion. 
fc  He  was  spitted  on  a  hickory  sapling,  twelve  feet  long, 
supported  on  crotches,  and  turned  by  handspikes.  An 
attendant  dipped  a  swab  in  a  tub  of  salt  and  water  to 
baste  the  ox  and  moderate  the  fire."  Each  soldier  then 
sliced  off  for  himself  a  piece  of  the  ill-cooked  beef. 

The  same  local  annals  contain  several  specifications 
of  grievances,  which  may  be  set  forth  in  the  terms  that 
the  writers  have  chosen  for  expressing  them. 

The  first  printed  charge  and  complaint  brought 
against  the  conduct  of  Colonel  Thompson  while  in 
command  at  Huntington  are  found  as  given  by  Hon. 
Silas  Wood,  the  first  historian  of  Long  Island.* 

Mr.  Wood  lived  in  Huntington,  and  represented 
the  temper  and  the  remembered  grievances  of  the  in- 
habitants. His  account,  which  is  interesting,  as  well 
as  sharply  pointed,  is  as  follows  :  — 

"From  1776  to  1783  the  island  was  occupied  by  British 
troops.  They  traversed  it  from  one  end  to  the  other,  and  were 
stationed  at  different  places  during  the  war. 

*  A  Sketch  of  the  First  Settlement  of  the  Several  Towns  on  Long  Island ;  with 
their  Political  Condition  to  the  End  of  the  American  Revolution.  By  Silas  Wood. 
Revised  Edition.  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.,  1826.  pp.  85-90. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  135 

"  The  whole  country  within  the  British  lines  was  subject  to 
martial  law  ;  the  administration  of  justice  was  suspended  ;  the 
army  was  a  sanctuary  for  crimes  and  robbery,  and  the  grossest 
offences  were  atoned  by  enlistment.  Many  of  those  who  had 
served  as  officers  in  the  militia,  or  as  members  of  the  town  and 
county  committees,  fled  into  the  American  lines  for  safety. 
Some  of  the  most  active  of  those  who  remained  at  home  were 
taken  to  New  York,  and  suffered  a  long  and  tedious  imprison- 
ment ;  others  were  harassed  and  plundered  of  their  property ; 
and  the  inhabitants  generally  were  subject  to  the  orders,  and 
their  property  to  the  disposal,  of  the  British  officers.  They 
compelled  the  inhabitants  to  do  all  kinds  of  personal  services, 
to  work  at  their  forts,  to  go  with  their  teams  on  foraging  par- 
ties, and  to  transport  their  cannon,  ammunition,  provisions,  and 
baggage  from  place  to  place,  as  they  changed  their  quarters, 
and  to  go  and  come  on  the  order  of  every  petty  officer  who  had 
the  charge  of  the  most  trifling  business. 

"  In  April,  1783,  Sir  Guy  Carlton  instituted  a  Board  of  Com- 
missioners for  the  purpose  of  adjusting  such  demands  against  the 
British  army  as  had  not  been  settled.  The  accounts  of  the 
people  of  the  town  of  Huntington  alone  for  property  taken  from 
them  for  the  use  of  the  army,  which  were  supported  by  receipts 
of  British  officers,  or  by  other  evidence,  which  were  prepared  to 
be  laid  before  the  Board,  amounted  to  ,£7,249  9*.  6^/.,  and  these 
.  accounts  were  not  supposed  to  comprise  one  fourth  part  of  the 
property  which  was  taken  from  them  without  compensation. 
These  accounts  were  sent  to  New  York  to  be  laid  before  the 
Board  of  Commissioners,  but  they  sailed  for  England  without 
attending  to  them,  and  the  people  from  whom  the  property  was 
taken  were  left,  like  their  neighbors  who  had  no  receipts,  with- 
out redress.  During  the  whole  war  the  inhabitants  of  the  isl- 
and, especially  those  of  Suffolk  County  [in  which  was  Hunting- 
ton],  were  perpetually  exposed  to  the  grossest  insult  and  abuse. 
They  had  no  property  of  a  movable  nature  that  they  could, 
properly  speaking,  call  their  own  ;  they  were  oftentimes  deprived 
of  the  stock  necessary  to  the  management  of  their  farms,  and 
were  deterred  from  endeavoring  to  produce  more  than  a  bare 


136  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

subsistence  by  the  apprehension  that  a  surplus  would  be  wrested 
from  them,  either  by  the  military  authority  of  the  purveyor  or 
by  the  ruffian  hand  of  the  plunderer. 

"  Besides  these  violations  of  the  rights  of  person  and  property, 
the  British  officers  did  many  acts  of  barbarity  for  which  there 
could  be  no  apology.  They  made  garrisons,  storehouses,  or 
stables  of  the  houses  of  public  worship  in  several  towns,  and 
particularly  of  such  as  belonged  to  the  Presbyterians.  In  the 
fall  of  1782,  at  the  conclusion  of  the  war,  about  the  time  the 
provisional  articles  of  the  treaty  of  peace  were  signed  in  Europe, 
Colonel  Thompson  (since  said  to  be  Count  Rumford),  who 
commanded  the  troops  then  stationed  at  Huntington,  without 
any  assignable  purpose  except  that  of  filling  his  own  pockets,  by 
its  furnishing  him  with  a  pretended  claim  on  the  British  treasury 
for  the  expense,  caused  a  fort  to  be  erected  in  Huntington,  and 
without  any  possible  motive,  except  to  gratify  a  malignant  dis- 
position by  vexing  the  people  of  Huntington,  he  placed  it  in 
the  centre  of  the  public  burying-ground,  in  defiance  of  a  re- 
monstrance of  the  trustees  of  the  town  against  the  sacrilege  of 
disturbing  the  ashes  and  destroying  the  monuments  of  the  dead." 

The  historian  proceeds  to  show  how  much  more  of 
"  cruelty  and  oppression "  the  people  of  the  island, 
after  the  peace,  had  to  suffer  from  their  own  Legisla- 
ture, by  legal  inflictions  and  fines,  and  the  denial  of 
their  claims  for  damages,  for  what  they  had  done 
through  compulsion  of  the  British  military  force,  in- 
cluding the  imposition  upon  them  of  a  tax  of  £37,000 
"  for  not  having  been  in  a  condition  to  take  an  active 
part  in  the  war  against  the  enemy  !  "  These  latter 
charges,  however,  are  aside  from  our  present  purpose, 
except  as  they  illustrate  the  miseries  of  war,  and  show, 
as  the  historian  pleads,  "  that  an  abuse  of  power  was 
not  peculiar  to  the  British  Parliament/* 

The  next  historical  annalist  of  Long  Island,  bearing 
a  name  very  nearly  the  same  as  that  of  the  subject  of 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  137 

his  severity,  Benjamin  F.  Thompson,  Esq.,*  repeats 
the  substance  of  the  above  charge  against  Colonel 
Thompson,  as  made  by  Wood,  and  adds  that,  instead 
of  listening  to  the  entreaties  and  remonstrances  of  the 
inhabitants,  "  he  compelled  them  to  assist  in  pulling 
down  the  Presbyterian  Church  to  furnish  materials  for 
the  building  of  the  fort." 

This  namesake  of  the  Colonel  brings  the  further  alle- 
gation against  him,  that  on  his  return  to  England 
"  he  received  the  enormous  sum  of  ^£30,000  sterling 
for  his  military  services,  and  was  also  knighted  by  the 
King/'  I  may  as  well  make  an  exhaustive  exhibition 
of  the  reproach  heaped  upon  Colonel  Thompson  by 
those  who  have  had  occasion  to  chronicle  the  matter ; 
so  I  will  quote  a  third  repetition  of  the  censure,  with 
aggravations,  from  a  later  historian  of  Long  Island, 
Mr.  Nathaniel  S.  Prime.f 

After  copying  in  an  early  part  of  his  volume  what 
has  been  above  transcribed  from  Wood,  and  affirming 
that  no  town  on  the  island  suffered  so  much  as  Hun- 
tington  from  the  insolence  and  outrages  and  oppression 
of  the  Tories  and  the  British  soldiers,  Mr.  Prime 
continues  :  — 

<c  The  seats  in  the  house  of  God  were  torn  up,  and  the 
building  converted  into  a  military  depot.  The  bell  was  taken 
away,  and  though  afterwards  restored,  it  was  .so  injured  as  to 
be  useless.  Subsequently  (1782)  when  the  contest  was  virtually 
ended,  the  church  was  entirely  pulled  down,  and  the  timber  used 
to  erect  blockhouses  and  barracks  for  the  troops.  And  to 
wound  the  feelings  of  the  inhabitants  most  deeply,  these  struct- 
ures were  erected  in  the  centre  of  the  burying-ground,  the 

*  The  History  of  Long  Island,  from  its  Discovery  and  Settlement,  &c.  By  Ben- 
jamin F.  Thompson.  Second  Edition.  1843.  Vol.  I.  pp.  an,  478. 

f  A  History  of  Long  Island,  from  its  first  Settlement  by  Europeans  to  the  year 
1845,  &c.  By  Nathaniel  S.  Prime.  New  York,  1845.  PP-  65>  66>  25r- 


138  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

graves  levelled,  and  the  tombstones  used  for  building  their  fire- 
places and  ovens.  The  writer  has  often  heard  old  men  testify, 
from  the  evidence  of  their  own  senses,  that  they  had  seen  the 
loaves  of  bread  drawn  out  of  these  ovens  with  the  reversed 
inscription  of  the  tombstones  of  their  friends  on  the  lower 
crust. 

"  The  redoubtable  commander  in  these  sacrilegious  proceed- 
ings was  Colonel  Benjamin  Thompson,  a  native  of  Massachu- 
setts, and  the  same  man  that  was  afterwards  created  by  the 
Duke  of  Bavaria  and  known  to  the  world  as  Count  Rumford. 
But  his  acts  in  this  place  have  given  him  an  immortality  which 
all  his  military  exploits,  his  philosophical  disquisitions,  and  scien- 
tific discoveries,  will  never  secure  to  him  among  the  descendants 
of  this  outraged  community. " 

Mr.  Prime  says  that  his  grandfather,  cc  the  aged  pastor 
of  the  congregation,"  was  peculiarly  obnoxious  to  the 
British  as  an  "  old  rebel,"  and  that  when  the  soldiers 
first  came  to  the  place  they  treated  him  with  special 
indignity,  littering  the  stable  with  valuable  books  from 
his  library.  Some  of  these  books  were  lying  before  the 
historian  as  he  wrote,  "with  the  impress  of  the  same 
savage  hands."  The  Rev.  Ebenezer  Prime,  the  min- 
ister here  referred  to,  died  in  1779,  so  that  Colonel 
Thompson  was  not  a  party  to  this  offence. 

I  have  not  assumed  the  championship  of  Colonel 
Thompson  as  a  soldier,  even  independently  of  his 
espousal  of  the  side  in  which  he  appears  against  his 
native  country.  He  may  have  been  responsible  for  all 
that  is  here  charged  against  him  as  a  matter  of  fact,  but 
there  are  no  adequate  grounds  for  ascribing  to  him 
malignity  of  motive  in  the  acts  done  under  his  com- 
mand. The  people  of  Long  Island  suffered  especial 
hardships  and  exactions  during  the  Revolutionary  strug- 
gle. After  the  disastrous  affair  to  our  forces  which 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  1 39 

occurred  there  so  early  in  the  war,  the  Island,  like 
New  York,  remained  in  the  possession  of  the  British 
forces,  naval  and  military,  till  the  peace.  Part  of  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Island  had  begun  very  vigorously  on 
the  popular  side,  and  many  of  the  real  patriots  had  fled 
to  the  main.  Those  who  were  compelled  to  remain  under 
a  sincere  or  a  forced  and  unwelcome  allegiance  to  the 
crown  had  to  meet  the  usual  conditions  of  the  occu- 
pancy of  a  spot  which  was  substantially  a  station  and 
centre  of  hostile  military  operations.  The  Island  was 
the  resting-place  for  the  British  regiments  when  not  on 
active  duty.  They  were  quartered  there  for  the  very 
great  convenience  of  embarking,  when  needed,  on  any 
expedition,  south  or  north.  Colonel  Thompson  does 
not  appear  to  have  had  any  special  duty  assigned  to 
him  on  the  Island,  but  was  merely  quartered  there  from 
having  nothing  to  do  elsewhere.  In  the  wniter  the 
troops  gave  over  campaign  work,  came  into  winter- 
quarters  on  the  Island,  and  built  huts  and  barracks, 
and  excavated  the' side-hills  to  get  comfortable  shelter 
and  sleeping-places.  The  town  of  Huntington  runs 
through  nearly  the  centre  of  the  Island^  from  the  sea- 
coast  to  opposite  the  town  of  Norwalk,  Connecticut, 
on  the  Sound.  At  Lloyd's  Neck,  near  Huntington, 
was  a  fort  to  protect  the  British  wood-cutters  against 
the  whale-boatmen  from  the  mainland,  who  came  out  at 
night  to  strip  the  country.  Firewood  and  boards  for 
huts  were  very  scarce  and  difficult  to  obtain.  There 
was  constant  depredating  from  across  the  Sound,  and 
also  sharp  smuggling  between  wily  Yankees,  the  sol- 
diers, and  the  disaffected  islanders. 

The  fort  that  Colonel  Thompson  built  was  doubt- 
less intended  chiefly  as  a  winter  shelter  for  his  troops ; 


140  Life  of  Count  Rum  ford. 

and  the  meeting-house  —  not  by  any  means  the  only 
one  destroyed  by  the  British  troops  for  fuel — was 
stripped  from  necessity.  There  was  a  similar  fort  built 
on  a  similar  rise  of  ground  at  Oyster  Bay  for  the  like 
twofold  purposes  of  shelter  and  protection  against 
Yankees. 

Mr.  Onderdonk  writes  me  that  he  has  "seen  the 
elevated  conical  hill  in  Huntington,  around  the  base 
of  which  the  road  winds.  It  was  just  the  place  for  a 
fort.  It  strikes  the  eye  of  the  stranger  at  once,  as  he  is 
about  entering  the  town.  When  I  saw  it,  about  1842, 
it  was  filled  with  tombstones.  Many  of  those  dis- 
turbed by  military  necessity  were  doubtless  what  we 
call  field-stones,  with  the  initials  and  the  year  of  death 
rudely  cut  on  them." 

Colonel  Thompson's  presence  is  noted  again  in  a 
piece  of  news  which  reached  Fishkill  from  Long  Island 
on  December  5,  1782.  "  The  enemy  are  fortifying 
Huntington.  They  have  pitched  on  a  burying-ground, 
and  have  dug  up  graves  and  gravestones,  to  the  great 
grief  of  the  people  there,  who,  when  they  remonstrated 
against  the  proceeding,  received  nothing  but  abuse." 

As  we  have  seen,  Colonel  Thompson  is  made  to  bear 
the  reproach  of  this  outrage,  aggravated  by  the  charge 
that  he  compelled  the  remonstrating  people  themselves 
to  assist  in  demolishing  their  church,  in  order  to  fur- 
nish materials  for  his  fort. 

On  December  1 8,  1782,  Thompson's  corps  —  "  the 
remains  of  the  Queen's  Rangers,  and  Tarlton's  Legion 
(five  or  six  hundred)"  —  were  reported  as  being  "at 
Huntington  to  protect  the  trade  with  the  mainland." 
His  force  is  afterwards  stated  as  "  five  hundred  and 
eighty  effectives." 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  141 

An  inhabitant  of  Stamford,  Connecticut,  reported 
that 

c<  On  December  I  he  was  at  Huntington,  passing  for  an 
inhabitant,  and  passed  within  four  rods  of  the  front  of  the  fort 
which  faces  the  north.  It  is  about  five  rods  in  front,  with  a 
gate  in  the  middle  ;  it  extends  a  considerable  distance  north  and 
south  :  the  works  were  altogether  of  earth,  about  six  feet  high, 
no  pickets  or  any  other  obstruction  of  the  works,  except  a  sort 
of  ditch  which  was  very  inconsiderable,  some  brush-like  small 
trees  fixed  on  the  top  of  the  works  in  a  perpendicular  form  ; 
he  was  told  it  encompassed  near  two  acres  of  ground.  It  is 
built  on  a  rising  ground,  and  takes  in  the  burying-ground  ;  the 
meeting  house  they  have  pulled  down.  The  troops  consist  of 
Thompson's  regiment,  the  remains  of  the  Queen's  Rangers,  and 
the  Legion,  being  five  hundred  and  fifty  effectives.  They  are 
quartered  as  compact  as  possible  in  the  inhabitants'  houses  and 
barns,  and  some  hutted  along  the  sides  of  the  fort,  which  makes 
one  side  of  the  hut.  The  inhabitants  of  Huntington  do  suffer 
exceedingly  from  the  treatment  they  receive  from  the  troops, 
who  say  the  inhabitants  of  that  county  are  all  rebels,  and  there- 
fore they  care  not  how  they  suffer." 

There  is  one  other  sharp  historical  criticism  in  our 
Revolutionary  literature  relating  to  Colonel  Thompson, 
a  reference  to  which  will  close  our  account  with  him  in 
his  military  career  against  his  native  country. 

It  will  have  been  observed  in  the  extracts  made  above, 
that  the  corps  commanded  by  him  is  described  as  made 
up  in  part  of  "  the  remains  of  the  Queen's  Rangers." 
The  corps  of  Hussars  known  under  that  name  through 
the  war  was  at  first  wholly  composed  of  American 
loyalists,  raised  mostly  in  Connecticut  and  the  neigh- 
borhood of  New  York,  and  was  especially  odious  to 
the  patriots.  Its  largest  force,  at  its  most  flourish- 
ing fortunes,  was  about  four  hundred  men.  Captain 


142  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

John  Graves  Simcoe  had  been,  in  October,  1777,  com- 
missioned to  the  command  of  the  Rangers  by  Sir 
William  Howe,  with  the  provincial  rank  of  Major. 
He  rose  in  that  command  to  the  rank  of  Lieutenant- 
Colonel,  attaining  by  real  service  the  military  grade 
which,  as  he  knew,  Thompson  had  got  by  favoritism. 
The  corps  had  been  diminished  by  dissension  and  de- 
sertion, while  it  had  been  from  time  to  time  replenished 
by  heavy  bounties  and  by  disaffected  and  mercenary 
men  who  proved  disheartened  or  faithless  in  the  patriot 
cause.  A  portion  of  the  corps  was  at  Yorktown  to 
share  in  the  mortification  of  the  surrender  there.  When 
it  became  known  that  Cornwallis  had  proposed  a  cessa- 
tion of  hostilities,  in  order  to  arrange  terms  for  giving 
up  the  posts  of  York  and  Gloucester,  with  his  whole 
army,  Simcoe,  knowing  well  what  treatment  would 
await  the  deserters  and  the  miscreants  in  his  own  corps 
from  the  rank  and  file  of  the  patriot  forces,  and  from 
the  rage  of  the  populace,  sought  permission  from  the 
British  commander,  if  the  treaty  were  not  finally  signed, 
to  allow  his  Rangers  to  try  to  escape  in  some  of  the 
boats  which  the  traitor  Arnold  had  built.  Simcoe 
hoped  that  a  great  part  of  the  remnant  of  his  corps 
might  thus  cross  the  Chesapeake,  land  in  Maryland, 
and  make  their  way  to  New  York.  Earl  Cornwallis 
approved  the  scheme  as  ingenious  and  desirable,  but 
could  not  himself  sanction  its  being  carried  into  effect, 
as  the  whole  army  must  share  one  fate.  The  meas- 
ure, however,  was  effected  under  a  deception.  The 
Earl  in  his  capitulation  had  reserved  a  vessel,  the 
Bonetta,  for  taking  his  sick  to  New  York.  Simcoe 
proving  to  be  "  in  a  dangerous  state  of  health,"  making 
<ca  sea  voyage  the  only  chance  by  which  he  could  save 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  143 

his  life/*  went  off  in  this  vessel,  with  as  many  of  the  Ran- 
gers and  of  deserters  in  other  corps  as  she  would  hold. 
They  were  to  be  exchanged,  on  their  convalescence,  as 
prisoners  of  war.  Sir  Henry  Clinton  allowed  Simcoe 
to  sail  immediately  for  England  on  his  arrival  at  New 
York,  and  there  in  December,  1781,  the  King  gave  him 
the  same  rank  in  the  regular  army  which  he  had  held 
as  a  provincial.  Captain  Saunders,  soon  arriving  from 
Charleston,  took  command  of  that  portion  of  the  corps 
which  reached  New  York  in  the  Bonetta. 

It  was  this  precious  constituency  —  once,  as  Simcoe 
insists,  constituting  the  forlorn  hope  of  the  British 
army  —  that  formed  a  part  of  Colonel  Thompson's 
command.  Simcoe' s  disgust  is  unconcealed  at  "  the 
severe  mortifications  which  Captain  Saunders  and  the 
officers  who  were  with  him  had  to  experience "  when 
the  following  order  from  the  Adjutant-General's  of- 
fice was  received.  It  was  reported  to  Simcoe,  with 
the  comments  which  follow,  while  he  was  in  Eng- 
land. 

"ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S  OFFICE,  March  31,  1783. 

"  SIR,  —  Lieutenant-Colonel  Thompson  having  received  or- 
ders to  complete  the  regiment  under  his  command  by  volunteers 
from  the  different  provincial  corps,  and  to  raise  in  like  manner 
four  additional  companies  of  light  infantry  for  a  particular  ser- 
vice, the  Commander-in-Chief  desires  you  would  give  all  pos- 
sible assistance  to  Lieutenant-Colonel  Thompson  and  those 
concerned  with  him  in  the  execution  of  this  business  by  en- 
couraging the  men  belonging  to  the  corps  under  your  command  to 
engage  in  this  service ;  and  his  Excellency  directs  me  to  assure 
you  that  neither  the  officers  nor  others  who  may  remain  with 
you  in  the  corps  shall  suffer  any  loss  or  any  injury  to  their 
pretensions  by  the  diminution  of  your  numbers  arising  from  the 
volunteers  who  may  join  the  corps  under  the  command  of 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Thompson.  It  is  to  be  understood,  that, 


144  Life  of  Count  Rztmford. 

though  the  men  wanted  for  this  service  are  to  engage  as  soon  as 
possible,  yet  they  are  not  to  quit  the  regiments  to  which  they  at 
present  belong  till  further  orders. 

"  OL.  DELANCY,  &c." 
(Addressed  to  Captain  Saunders.) 

Simcoe,  in  his  chagrin  at  this  transfer  to  Thompson 
of  a  corps  which  his  own  self-esteem  put  at  so  conspicuous 
an  estimate  for  service,  ascribes  the  outrage  to  the  fact 
that  Sir  Henry  Clinton,  the  late  Commander-in-Chief, 
who  well  knew  the  merits  of  the  Rangers,  had  recently 
been  recalled  to  England,  and  been  succeeded  by  Sir 
Guy  Carlton,  who  had  not  learned  to  regard  them  so 
highly. 

The  "particular  service"  for  which  Thompson's 
command  was  probably  intended,  I  infer  to  have  been 
a  projected  enterprise  for  the  defence  of  Jamaica,  which, 
it  was  understood,  was  about  to  be  threatened  by  an 
expedition  under  D'Estaing.  The  announcement  of 
the  treaty  of  peace,  which  was  soon  made,  rendered 
the  intended  enterprise  unnecessary,  and,  as  we  shall 
see,  put  an  end  to  Thompson's  career  here.  But  the 
comment  with  which,  as  Simcoe  says,  the  order  of  the 
Adjutant-General  was  reported  to  him  in  England  con- 
veys a  sting,  the  bitterness  of  which  we  can  account  for 
only  by  inference.  It  was  as  follows  :  — 

"  I  will  only  say  that  though  as  military  men  they  could  not 
publicly  reprobate  and  counteract  this  unjust,  humiliating,  and 
disgraceful  order,  yet,  conscious  of  their  superiority  both  in  rank 
in  life  and  in  military  service  to  the  person  whom  it  was 
meant  to  aggrandize,  they  could  not  but  sensibly  feel  it.  I  am 
sorry  to  say  that  some  of  the  Rangers,  being  made  drunk,  were 
induced  to  volunteer  it.  The  arrival  of  the  last  packet,  as  it 
took  away  the  pretence  of  their  being  for  *  some  particular  ser- 
vice/ has  put  a  total  stop  to  this  business.  The  warrant,  I  am 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  145 

told,  specified  that  when  this  corps  was  completed  and  em- 
barked, they  were  from  that  time  to  be  on  the  British  establish- 
ment." * 

Governor  Carlton  issued,  on  August  17,  1783,  the 
following  disbanding  order,  which  shows  incidentally 
the  provision  made  for  the  purpose  of  removing  the 
most  odious  of  those  who  had  served  in  the  British 
ranks  from  the  retribution  so  much  dreaded  by  them 
if  they  should  be  left  to  the  mercy  of  the  Legislature 
and  the  people  of  the  nation  that  had  achieved  its  inde- 
pendence. 

"King's  American  Rangers,  Queen's  Rangers,  [with  ten 
other  provincial  regiments  named,]  and  all  men  who  wish  'to 
be  discharged  in  America,  are  to  hold  themselves  in  readiness 

O  * 

to  embark  for  Nova  Scotia,  where  they  will  be  disbanded,  unless 
they  prefer  being  disbanded  in  New  York.  A  non-commis- 

*  "  A  Journal  of  the  Operations  of  the  Queen's  Rangers,  from  the  End  of  the  Year 
1777  to  the  Conclusion  of  the  late  American  War."  By  Lieutenant-Colonel  Simcoe. 
This  journal,  privately  printed  by  the  author  in  1787,  was  published  in  a  new  edi- 
tion by  Messrs.  Bartlett  and  Welford,  New  York,  in  1844.  The  -extracts  above  are 
from  this  reprint,  pp.  255-57.  Personal  vanity  and  superciliousness  characterize  this 
egotistical  journal.  "  Mr.  Washington,"  as  the  conceited  writer  chooses  always  to  call 
the  American  commander,  was  the  especial  object  of  his  petty  spite,  and  chiefly  for 
his  course  in  the  case  of  Major  Andre.  Let  the  following  specimen  suffice.  "  In 
the  length  of  the  war,  for  what  one  generous  action  has  Mr.  Washington  been 
celebrated  ?  What  honorable  sentiment  ever  fell  from  his  lips  which  can  invalidate 
the  belief,  that,  surrounded  with  difficulties  and  ignorant  in  whom  to  confide,  he 
meanly  sheltered  himself  under  the  opinions  of  his  officers  and  the  Congress  in  per- 
petrating his  own  previous  determination?  And,  in  perfect  conformity  to  his  in- 
terested ambition,  which,  crowned  with  success  beyond  human  calculation  in  1783,  to 
use  his  own  expression,  'bid  a  last  farewell  to  the  cares  of  office,  and  all  the  employ- 
ments of  public  life,'  to  resume  them  at  this  moment  (1787)  as  President  of  the 
American  Convention  ? "  &c.  As  I  transcribe  these  sentences,  I  happen  to  sit  where, 
on  raising  my  eyes,  I  see  at  a  few  rods'  distance  the  majestic  work  of  Ball,  the 
equestrian  statue  of  Washington,  in  the  Public  Garden.  A  small  cur-dog  is  looking 
up  at  it,  though  I  cannot  hear  that  he  barks.  It  should  be  added  that  Simcoe,  when 
he  was  afterwards  Governor  of  Canada,  exhibited  more  of  courtesy  to  the  representa- 
tives of  the  nation  which  with  his  light  corps  of  depredators  he  had  sought  to 
vanquish. 

10 


146  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

sioned  officer  will  have  two  hundred  acres  of  land,  and  a  private 
one  hundred  acres,  in  Nova  Scotia.  The  soldiers  can  go  to 
England  or  stay  in  America. 

"  The  King's  American  Dragoons,  Colonel  Thompson,  have 
permanent  rank  in  America." 

Colonel  Thompson,  by  leave  of  absence  dated  April 
ii,  returned  direct  to  England,  ready  for  any  further 
military  service  which  might  be  required  of  him,  and 
indeed  earnestly  bent  upon  engaging  in  it ;  as  we  learn, 
from  an  avowal  made  by  him  soon  afterwards,  that 
he  had  now  conceived  a  passion  for  it.  He  at  once 
solicited  to  be  employed  with  his  regiment  in  the 
East  Indies,  but  the  peace  dispensed  with  the  ne- 
cessity. Either  his  actual  services  in  command,  or  the 
incidental  influence  and  value  of  his  extraordinary  or- 
ganizing and  executive  abilities  in  military  affairs,  helped 
by  the  personal  charm  which  always  advanced  him,  had 
won  for  him  the  highest  esteem  and  favor  of  General 
Carlton.  The  General  having  made  distinguished  men- 
tion of  him"  in  his  despatches  to»the  King,  his  Majesty, 
on  this  recommendation,  advanced  him  to  a  colonelcy, 
though  he  had  held  the  rank  of  Lieutenant-Colonel 
but  two  years.  He  was  thus  secured  half-pay  on  the 
British  establishment  for  the  remainder  of  his  life. 

The  following  is  given  by  Pictet  as  the  letter  from 
the  British  Secretary  of  State  to  General  Carlton,  au- 
thorizing the  promotion  of  Thompson,  copied  from 
the  original,  as  shown  by  the  last-named  to  his  friend. 

"  Lieutenant-Colonel  Thompson  having  been  particularly  dis- 
tinguished by  you  in  the  appointment  to  the  command  of  the 
corps  of  provincial  troops  intended  to  be  sent  upon  service  in 
the  West  Indies,  (which  corps,  had  it  embarked,  would,  agreea- 
bly to  the  King's  commands  signified  by  the  late  Secretary  of 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  147 

State  in  his  letter  of  the  3d  of  January  last,  have  been  placed 
upon  the  British  establishment,)  and  as  it  appears  by  your  letter 
of  the  J5th  of  June  that  his  conduct  has  met  with  your  full 
approbation,  and  that  you  consider  him  to  be  an  officer  possess- 
ing an  uncommon  share  of  merit  in  his  profession,  the  King, 
for  these  reasons,  has  consented  to  his  being  appointed,  by  com- 
mission from  you,  Colonel  of  the  King's  American  Dragoons 
upon  the  American  provincial  establishment." 

"  WHITEHALL,  8th  August,  1783. 

Pictet  informs  us — again,  of  course,  receiving  his 
information  directly  from  Thompson  —  that  the  first 
solicitude  of  the  latter  on  his  arrival  in  England  was 
to  respond  to  the  confidence  which  the  American  officers 
had  reposed  in  him  that  he  would  be  the  most  effective 
agent  for  securing  to  them  compensation  for  the  sacri- 
fices which  they  had  incurred  in  their  loyalty  to  the 
mother  country.  Thompson  had  peculiar  influence  and 
facilities  for  pressing  these  claims.  Yet  the  responsi- 
bility which  he  had  assumed  was  in  many  respects  em- 
barrassing and  irksome.  The  fifth  article  of  the  Treaty 
of  Peace  was  < generally  regarded  as  meanly  sacrificing 
the  interests  of  the  loyalists,  as  it  covenanted  only  that 
the  American  Congress,  which  declared  itself  to  be  power- 
less in  the  case  except  in  the  way  of  advice,  should  pro- 
pose to  the  States  a  relaxation  of  the  severities  and  a 
relieving  of  some  of  the  penalties  against  that  odious 
class  of  exiles.  The  advice,  of  course,  was  mainly  in- 
effective. 

Failing  of  adequate  redress  through  the  provision  in 
the  Treaty,  the  loyalists  importuned  Parliament  with 
their  piteous  complaints  and  demands. 

As  to  the  compensation  of  £30,000  received  by 
Colonel  Thompson,  as  alleged  by  the  indignant  annal- 


148  Life  of  Count  Riunford. 

ist  of  Long  Island,  the  assertion  is  simply  preposterous. 
There  was  an  army  of  suppliants  and  mendicants  for 
whom  the  justice  and  mercy  of  Parliament  were  be- 
sieged, not  without  strong  opposition,  through  many  of 
its  sessions.  Benjamin  West's  allegorical  picture  of 
the  reception  of  the  American  refugees  in  England  had 
in  it  many  elements  of  the  purely  ideal.  Before  Thomp- 
son had  reached  England  on  his  return,  a  Parliamentary 
commission  had  already  been  revising  the  list  of  pension- 
ers and  their  allowances ;  and  by  their  award  in  June, 
1783,  a  sum  of  less  than  fifty  thousand  pounds  had 
been  distributed  among  nearly  seven  hundred  loyalists. 
The  claimants  and  their  urgency  so  increased  as  to 
engage  a  permanent  commission  for  seven  successive 
years.  That  Thompson  should  have  received  the  lion's 
share  to  such  an  exorbitant  excess  in  this  distribution 
would  have  been  altogether  unlikely,  even  if  he  had  had 
pre-eminent  claims  for  losses  incurred,  or  for  great 
services  performed.  He  had  really  left  but  very  little 
of  his  own  behind  when  he  first  abandoned  his  birth- 
place. He  had  had  a  lucrative  post  ia  England,  and 
his  military  services,  here  were  abundantly  remunerated 
by  promotion  and  a  permanent  position  on  the  British 
establishment.  The  whole  tenor  of  his  life,  his  gen- 
erosity, and  his  public  and  private  munificence,  secure 
him  against  the  imputation  either  of  greed  in  getting 
or  of  selfishness  in  hoarding  money.  Cuvier  said  of 
him  most  truly,  that  he  lavished  his  own  money  to 
teach  others  how  to  save  theirs. 

I  am  glad  to  be  able  to  close  at  this  point  the  refer- 
ence which  I  have  had  to  make  to  the  influence  and 
efforts  exerted  by  Major  Thompson,  both  in  a  civil 
and  a  military  capacity,  adverse  to  the' cause  of  Amer- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  149 

ican  independence.  I  have  allowed  myself  to  use  some 
harsh  and  deprecatory  terms  concerning  this  period  in 
his  career,  and  concerning  the  policy  and  measures  of 
the  British  government  to  which  he  seems  so  strenu-  « 
ously  to  have  committed  himself.  Personal  and  gen- 
eral considerations  have  alike  induced  me  to  write  as 
I  have  done.  It  is  to  be  remembered  that  Thompson, 
up  to  the  time  when  he  finally  left  Woburn,  had  steadily 
and  positively  affirmed  his  attachment  to  the  cause  in 
whose  behalf  his  friends,  neighbors,  and  fellow-country- 
men were  putting  themselves  in  armed  opposition  to 
the  British  power.  We  have  not  only  his  disclaimer 
of  any  act  or  word  at  variance  with  the  popular  en- 
thusiasm, but  his  reiterated  professions  of  full  sym- 
pathy with  it.  Add  to  this,  also,  the  well-established 
fact,  that  he  had  through  his  friend  Baldwin,  and  by 
his  own  direct  appeals,  sought  a  command  in  the  Amer- 
ican army  while  in  camp  in  and  around  Cambridge,  I 
have  not  authenticated  a  traditional  report  that  he 
petitioned  Washington  himself  to  that  effect.  Nor 
can  I  certify  to  —  though  I  think  very  probable  —  the 
statement  made  by  the  late  Colonel  Samuel  Swett,  in 
his  pamphlet  on  the  Bunker  Hill  battle,  to  the  effect 
that  Thompson  was  chagrined  at  his  disappointment 
in  not  obtaining  the  place  given  to  Gridley  in  the 
artillery 'Service.  It  is  enough  for  us  to  know,  as  we 
do,  that  some  of  those,  apparently  well-informed  per- 
sons, who  had  heard  Major  Thompson  on  his  trial  and 
on  other  public  occasions,  as  well  as  in  private,  use  the 
strongest  language  in  asserting  his  patriotism,  very  soon 
after  heard  of  him  as  on  familiar  and  confidential  terms 
with  the  British  officers  in  Boston,  and  as  making  him- 
self of  use  to  them.  If,  too,  as  there  is  reason  to  be- 


150  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

lieve,  he  was  lurking  in  secrecy  for  many  months  in  that 
town  between  his  coming  to  it  from  Newport  and  its 
evacuation,  rumors  and  hints  of  what  could  not  be  re- 
garded otherwise  than  as  dishonorable  in  his  course 
could  hardly  fail  to  reach  his  old  acquaintances.  His 
readiness  to  act  as  bearer  of  despatches,  and  then  to  be 
the  servant  and  adviser  of  the  British  War-Minister,  and 
soon  his  colleague  in  office,  and  then  to  enlist  and  com- 
mand a  most  odious  class  of  troops  in  the  service  of 
what  was  regarded  as  tyranny,  complete  the  grounds  on 
which  his  countrymen  at  the  time  would  condemn  him, 
—  those  grounds  being  furnished  entirely  by  himself. 
The  constancy  of  Baldwin's  friendship  accrues  to  the 
credit  of  Baldwin  himself.  Till  Thompson  had  won 
a  name  of  honor  and  renown  in  other  ranges  of  his 
genius,  and  indeed  even  after  his  benevolent  projects  had 
done  so  much  to  offset  reproach,  there  were  many  in 
this  neighborhood  who  spoke  of  him  with  indignation 
and  scorn.  Nor  can  the  plea  advanced  for  him  of 
having  been  driven  by  unjust  suspicion  and  ill-usage, 
and  by  the  withholding  from  him  of  a  coveted  promo- 
tion, to  turn  against  an  imperilled  cause  which  he  had 
professed  in  his  heart  to  love,  be  of  much  weight  in 
his  defence.  (See  Appendix.) 

Having  thus  pronounced  upon  him  as  in  opposition 
in  act  to  himself  and  his  convictions,  I  may  add  to 
such  praise  as  is  due  to  him  as  a  good  soldier,  quick 
and  true  and  bold  in  action,  and  faithful  to  the  govern- 
ment which  he.  served,  the  higher  tribute,  that  from 
the  hour  when  the  war  closed  he  became,  and  ever  con- 
tinued to  be,  the  constant  friend  and  generous  benefactor 
of  his  native  country.  The  engraving  on  the  opposite 
page  is  from  a  painting  of  Thompson  as  a  British 
officer,  taken  at  this  time. 


COL. BENJAMIN  THOMPSON  AS  A  BRITISH  OFFICER. 
1788.  AGED  3o. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

Thompson  receives  Permission  to  travel  on  the  Continent.  — 
Gibbon  and  Laurens.  —  Meeting  with  Maximilian  de 
Deux  Fonts.  —  Intercourse  with  French  Officers.  —  Vis- 
its Munich.  —  Goes  to  Vienna.  —  Returns,  by  Invitation 
of  the  Elector  y  to  Munich.  —  In  England.  —  Knighted.  — 
Permitted  to  enter  the  Service  of  the  Elector.  —  His 
Career  and  Services  in  Bavaria.  —  Offices  and  Honors.  — 
Schemes.  —  Essays.  —  Tears  of  Preparation.  —  Work- 
Houses  at  Mannheim  and  Munich.  —  Military  Reforms. 

.  —  Soldiers  Gardens.  —  Mendicancy  :  its  Abuses,  Meas- 
ures for  its  Removal.  —  Wise  and  Efficient  Plans.  —  Seiz- 
ure of  Beggars. — Experiments  on  Food.  — Minor  Schemes 
of  Reforms.  —  Sickness.  —  Travels  in  Italy  and  Switzer- 
land. —  Visits  to  Hospitals  and  Poor-Houses.  —  Returns 
to  Munich.  —  Convalescence.  —  Writes  his  Essays.  — 
Goes  to  England.  —  Economical  Schemes  there.  —  Pub- 
lishes his  Essays.  —  Visits  Ireland.  —  Sends  for  his 
Daughter. 

AS  a  commissioned  officer  of  high  rank  in  the  Brit- 
ish army,  now  on  half-pay,  though  without  an 
occasion  for  his  active  services,  Colonel  Thompson, 
of  course,  needed  a  special  permission  to  enable  him 
to  leave  the  kingdom,  if  only  for  travel,  and  still  more 
if  he  had  any  purpose  of  seeking  military  employment 
under  another  power.  He  readily  obtained  leave  of 
the  King  to  visit  the  Continent.  He  had  two  leading 


152  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

objects  in  view.  One  was  of  pure  curiosity,  connected 
with  a  search  for  means  of  self-improvement  and  oppor- 
tunities of  advancing  the  general  welfare  of  his  fellow- 
men.  His  other  aim  was  the  gratification  of  a  military 
ambition,  —  a  temporary  passion,  it  would  seem,  caught 
from  his  recent  occupations  in  the  Bureau  and  in  the 
camp.  Looking  out  for  an  opportunity  of  exercising 
this  ambition,  he  hoped  to  find  a  chance  to  serve  as  a 
volunteer  in  the  Austrian  army  against  the  Turks. 

He  left  England  in  September,  1783,  with  no  anti- 
cipation of  the  ultimate  result  of  what  was  to  him  in 
intent  mainly  a  trial  of  fortune.  On  his  passage  across 
the  channel  for  Calais,  chance  seems  to  have  given 
him  two  fellow-voyagers  who  might  well  occupy  his 
curiosity  and  interest  either  on  a  long  or  a  short 
transit.  One  of  these  was  Henry  Laurens,  a  former 
President  of  the  American  Congress,  recently  released 
from  the  Tower  of  London,  after  more  than  a  year's 
confinement,  as  a  sort  of  exchange  for  the  paroled  Gen- 
eral Burgoyne.  Reference  has  already  been  made  to 
Colonel  Thompson's  official  knowledge  and  his  free 
disclosure  of  the  contents  of  the  papers  which  had  been 
taken  from  the  person  of  this  state  prisoner  on  his 
capture.  There  may  have  been  no  lack  of  courtesy 
between  these  two  representatives  of  a  pacified  strife, 
and  there  was  much  matter  of  large  interest  that  might 
well  engage  them  in  animated  conversation.  Yet  there 
could  have  been  but  little  of  cordiality  or  sympathy 
between  them. 

The  other  fellow-voyager  was  the  historian  Gibbon, 
who  had  just  lost  his  place  at  the  Board  of  Trade. 
Thompson  was  transporting  with  him  some  fine  Eng- 
lish horses.  These,  it  seems,  by  their  restlessness  and 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  153 

stamping,  excited  the  anxiety  and  dread  of  Gibbon  lest 
they  might  cause  the  vessel  to  founder.  Pictet  says 
that  Thompson  informed  him  that  Gibbon  had  con- 
fessed his  fright  on  this  occasion  in  a  letter  to  Lord 
Sheffield,  found  in  the  published  correspondence.  Pic- 
tet adds,  on  the  same  alleged  authority,  that  Gibbon 
signified  to  his  Lordship  the  profound  impression  made 
upon  him  by  Thompson  in  their  brief  intercourse, 
describing  him  by  three  epithets,  as  "the  Soldier,  the 
Philosopher,  and  the  Statesman,  Thompson/'  It  is  to 
be  hoped,  as  a  cover  for  Thompson's  modesty,  that, 
happening  to  have  the  interesting  volume  at  hand,  he 
playfully  referred  to  it  in  conversation  with  his  guest, 
and  left  him  to  copy  the  reference  instead  of  repeating 
the  compliment  himself.  But  if  so,  Pictet  must  have 
copied  carelessly.  As  there  is  a  vivacity  in  the  letter 
of  Gibbon  here  quoted,  I  will  transfer  to  my  pages  that 
portion  of  it  which  has  interest  for  us.  It  is  dated 
Dover,  September  17,  1783. 

"  Last  night  the  wind  was  so  high  that  the  vessel  could  not 
stir  from  the  harbor  ;  this  day  it  is  brisk  and  fair.  We  are 
flattered  with  the  hope  of  making  Calais  Harbor  by  the  same 
tide  in  three  hours  and  a  half;  but  any  delay  will  leave  the 
disagreeable  option  of  a  tottering  boat  or  a  tossing  night.  What 
a  cursed  thing  to  live  in  an  island  !  this  step  is  more  awkward 
than  the  whole  journey.  The  triumvirate  of  this  memorable 
embarkation  will  consist  of  the  grand  Gibbon,  Henry  Laurens, 
Esq.,  President  of  Congress,  and  Mr.  Secretary,  Colonel,  Ad- 
miral, Philosopher  Thompson,  attended  by  three  horses,  who 
are  not  the  most  agreeable  fellow-passengers.  If  we  survive,  I 
will  finish  and  seal  my  letter  at  Calais.  Our  salvation  shall  be 
ascribed  to  the  prayers  of  my  lady  and  aunt,  for  I  do  belie  /e 
they  both  pray 

"  Boulogne,   next    day.  —  Instead    of   Calais,   the   wind    has 


154  Life  of  Count  R^Mnford. 

driven  us  to  Boulogne,  where  we  landed  in  the  evening,  without 
much  noise  and  difficulty Laurens  has  read  the  pam- 
phlet, and  thinks  it  has  done  much  mischief.  A  good  sign  !  "  * 

The  pamphlet  here  referred  to  was  Lord  Sheffield's 
Observations  on  the  Commerce  of  the  American  States. 

Pictet  continues  to  report  from  his  own  notes  of  con- 
versations with  his  friend,  and  in  what  follows  is  proba- 
bly almost  literally  correct. 

"  Here  begins  a  new  epoch  in  the  career  of  my  illustrious 
friend,  and  a  purely  accidental  circumstance  had  a  decisive  influ- 
ence over  his  destiny.  He  arrived  at  Strasburg,  where  the 
Prince,  Maximilian  of  Deux  Fonts,  now  [1801]  Elector  of 
Bavaria,  then  Field-Marshal  in  the  service  of  France,  was  in 
garrison.  This  prince,  commanding  on  parade,  sees  among  the 
spectators  an  officer  in  a  foreign  uniform,  mounted  on  a  fine 
English,  horse,  whom  he  addresses.  Thompson  informs  him 
that  he  comes  from  serving  in  the  American  war.  The  Prince, 
in  pointing  out  to  him  many  officers  who  surround  him,  says, 
'  These  gentlemen  were  in  the  same  war,  but  against  you  ! 
They  belonged  to  the  Royal  Regiment  of  Deux  Ponts,  that  acted 
in  America  under  the  orders  of  Count  Rochambeau.' 

"  They  engaged  in  conversation  which  became  very  animated. 
Colonel  Thompson,  being  invited  to  dine  with  the  Prince,  met 
at  the  table  a  number  of  French  officers  whom  he  had  encoun- 
tered on  the  field  in  America.  They  talked  at  length  of  the 
events  of  this  war.  The  Colonel  produced  his  portfolio,  which 
contained  exact  plans  of  the  principal  engagements,  the  forts, 
the  sieges,  and  an  excellent  collection  of  maps.  One  and 
another  recognized  the  place  or  the  interesting  incident  which 
was  recalled  to  him.  They  conversed  a  long  while,  and  sepa- 
rated promising  to  meet  again.  The  Prince  was  passionately 
devoted  to  his  profession  and  intensely  eager  for  information. 
He  invited  the  Colonel  for  the  next  day.  They  resumed  with 

*  The  Autobiography  and  Correspondence  of  Edward  Gibbon,  the  Historian.  Re- 
print of  the  original  edition.  London:  Alexander  Murray  and  Son.  1869.  pp.  301,  302. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  155 

the  same  zest  the  conversation  of  yesterday.  When  at  last  the 
traveller  took  leave,  the  Prince  engaged  him  to  pass  through 
Munich,  and  gave  him  a  friendly  letter  to  the  Elector  of  Ba- 
varia, his  uncle. 

"  The  season  was  advanced,  and  he  was  in  haste  to  reach 
Vienna.  He  had  purposed  to  stop  at  Munich  two  or  three 
days  at  most ;  but  he  passed  there  five  days,  and  then  did  not 
leave  but  with  regret  a  city  where  the  tokens  of  the  regard  of 
the  Sovereign  and  the  attentions  of  different  classes  of  society 
were  extended  to  him  with  that  frank  cordiality  which  so  emi- 
nently distinguishes  the  Bavarian  nation.  He  received  equally 
at  Vienna  the  most  flattering  welcome,  and  was  presented  at 
court,  and  mingled  in  the  first  society.  There  he  passed  a 
part  of  the  winter,  and,  learning  that  the  war  against  the  Turks 
was  not  to  be  carried  on,  he  yielded  to  the  attractive  memories 
of  Munich,  and,  passing  through  Venice,  where  he  stopped  some 
weeks,  and  by  the  Tyrol,  he  returned  to  Brompton  by  the  end 
of  the  winter  of  1784." 

There  is  an  ingredient  from  the  imagination,  or  from 
a  confused  memory,  or,  it  may  be,  from  the  conviviality 
of  a  banquet  in  the  quarters  of  military  officers,  in  a 
part  of  the  relation  thus  made  by  Pictet.  That  any 
of  the  French  or  Bavarian  officers  whom  Colonel 
Thompson  met  at  Strasburg  had  been  directly  op- 
posed to  him  in  any  of  the  same  actions  in  our  Revo- 
lutionary War,  is  an  assumption  for  which  I  can  find  no 
grounds  in  matters  of  fact.  There  is  some  confusion 
likewise  in  such  documentary  and  historical  references 
as  we  have  to  the  individual  whose  attention  on  parade 
is  said  to  have  been  first  drawn  to  Colonel  Thompson. 

Dr.  Samuel  Abbot  Green,  of  Boston,  while  walking 
upon  a  quay  in  Paris,  in  1867,  noticed  in  a  second- 
hand book-stall  a  manuscript  journal  purporting  to 
have  been  written  by  "  Comte  G.  de  Deux  Ponts."  It 
had  been  well  preserved  and  handsomely  ornamented, 


156  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

and  covered  a  hundred  and  fifty-two  pages.  The  jour- 
nal and  three  letters  following  it  related  to  a  military 
campaign  in  America.  On  returning  to  Boston,  Dr. 
Green  translated  and  carefully  annotated  this  manu- 
script, and  published  it  with  an  Introduction,  in  1868, 
under  the  title  of  "  My  Campaigns  in  America.  A 
Journal  kept  by  Count  William  de  Deux  Fonts, 
1780-81.  Translated  from  the  French  Manuscript."* 
This  journal,  the  careful  editor  thinks,  was  written  by 
one  of  two  brothers  —  Christian  the  Colonel,  and 
William  the  Lieutenant-Colonel,  of  the  Royal  Regi- 
ment Deux-Ponts  — who  were  among  our  French  allies 
in  the  siege  of  York.  He  regards  them  as  illegitimate 
sons  —  by  a  French  mother,  once  a  danseuse^  afterwards 
Baroness  von  Forbach — of  Christian,  Count  Palatine, 
and  Duke  of  D'eux-Ponts-Birkenfield.  At  his  death 
his  dukedom  passed  successively  to  his  two  nephews, 
Charles  Augustus  and  Maximilian,  —  the  latter  of 
whom  became  in  1799  Elector,  and  in  1805  King, 
of  Bavaria.  It  was  this  Maximilian  whose  interest 
was  attracted  to  Colonel  Thompson  as  a  British  officer 
at  Strasburg,  and  who  was  the  medium  of  introducing 
the  latter  to  his  uncle,  then  Elector.  He  had  not 
been  in  the  American  campaigns,  and  therefore  was  not 
the  writer  of  the  journal.  He  was,  however,  the  prince 
referred  to  by  Pictet  who  made  known  to  the  French 
officers,  among  whom  probably  was  the  diarist,  an 
officer  who  had  served  in  the  British  army  in  our  war. 
They  might  well  have  with  them,  if  Thompson  had 
not,  the  field-plans  and  maps  of  several  sites  and  ac- 

*  Dr.  Green,  having  been  for  more  than  three  years  the  surgeon  of  the  Twenty- 
Fourth  Regiment  of  Massachusetts  Volunteers  in  the  war  of  the  Rebellion,  was  able 
most  felicitously  to  inscribe  his  publication  to  the  officers  and  men  who  were  in 
service  in  some  of  the  places  mentioned  in  its  pages. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  157 

tions;  and  of  these  Thompson  would  have  perfect 
knowledge  officially,  if  not  from  personal  observation. 
It  would  be  very  agreeable  for  those  who  had  come  out 
sound  in  limb  from  the  recent  struggles  to  recount  the 
incidents  of  them  at  hospitable  tables.  The  French 
officers  could  not  have  found  a  better-informed  or  a 
more  communicative  companion  to  tell  them  whatever 
might  gratify  their  curiosity. 

M.  Pictet  does  not  inform  us  where  the  following 
incident  of  sentiment  and  moralizing,  which  he  relates, 
occurred.  It  is  reported  as  taken  down  from  his  friend's 
lips. 

"  I  owe  it,"  said  he  to  me,  one  day,  "  to  a  beneficent  Deity, 
that  I  was  cured  in  season  of  this  martial  folly.  I  met,  at  the 
house  of  the  Prince  de  Kaunitz,  a  lady,  aged  seventy  years,  of 
infinite  spirit  and  full  of  information.  She  was  the  wife  of 
General  Bourghausen.  The  Emperor,  Joseph  II.,  came  often 
to  pass  the  evening  with  her.  This  excellent  person  conceived 
a  regard  for  me  ;  she  gave  me  the  wisest  advice,  made  my  ideas 
take  a  new  direction,  and  opened  my  eyes  to  other  kinds  of 
glory  than  that  of  victory  in  battle." 

It  was  well,  therefore,  that  he  could  not  fight  against 
the  Turks.  Colonel  Thompson  had  received  from  the 
Elector  an  earnest  invitation  to  enter  into  his  service  in 
a  joint  military  and  civil  capacity.  It  was  the  very  year 
in  which  Bavaria  was  a  prize  in  contest  between  the 
imperial  Continental  powers, — Austria,  Prussia,  and 
Russia,  with  France  in  abeyance  only  to  wait  a  later 
opportunity,  intriguing  and  bargaining  for  a  territory 
which,  under  changing  dynasties  and  disputed  succes- 
sions of  dukedoms  and  palatinates,  could  hardly  be  said 
to  be  either  independent  or  in  vassalage.  The  Elector, 
Charles  Theodore,  whom  we  are  henceforward  to  regard 


158  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

till  his  death,  in  February  16,  1799,  as  the  confidential 
friend  and  the  ardently  grateful  patron  of  Thompson, 
committed  himself  to  the  protection  of  Prussia.  He 
sent  his  contingent  to  the  army  of  the  empire  in  the 
French  Revolution,  and  being  a  prince  whose  aims  were 
high,  and  whose  interest  in  the  welfare  of  his  subjects 
was  sincere,  as  he  foresaw  the  troublous  times  of  that 
mighty  convulsion,  he  seems  to  have  desired  to  set  his 
own  dominions  in  order  by  removing  abuses  and  intro- 
ducing various  economical  improvements. 

The  discerning  mind  of  the  Elector  had  detected  in 
his  few  days'  interviews  with  his  mercurial  guest  the 
versatility  and  the  ability  which  were  so  marked  in  him, 
and  appreciated  the  training  of  his  thirty  years  of  life 
in  the  workshop,  the  Cabinet,  and  the  field.  Pictet  says 
that  he  also  corresponded  with  Thompson  during  his 
stay  at  Vienna.  The  pressing  request  of  the  Elector 
was  undoubtedly  welcome  to  Thompson,  but  he  would 
need  to  have  the  permission  of  the  King  of  England 
before  he  could  entertain  it.  He  therefore  returned  to 
London  to  seek  for  that  permission.  The  King  not 
only  granted  Thompson  the  favor  for  which  he  applied, 
but  also  conferred  on  him  the  honor  of  knighthood  on 
February  23,  1784.*  I  copy  here  the  Grant  of  Arms 
to  Sir  Benjamin,  before  referred  to,  as  the  best  token  of 
the  position  to  which  he  had  now  attained.f 

"  To  all  and  singular  to  whom  these  Presents  shall  come, 
Isaac  Heard,  Esquire,  Garter  Principal  King  of  Arms  ;  and 
Thomas  Lock,  Esquire,  Clarenceux  King  of  Arms  of  the 

*  Annual  Register  for  the  Year,  p.  114. 

f  The  original  parchment,  perfect  and  unsullied,  with  all  its  seals,  is  in  the  pos- 
session of  Mrs.  James  F.  Baldwin  of  Boston,  widow  of  the  executor  of  Countess  Sarah 
Rumford. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  159 

South,  East,  and  West  Parts  of  England,  from  the  River  Trent 
Southwards,  send  Greeting  :  Whereas  it  appears  by  a  Memorial 
recorded  in  the  College  of  Arms,  that  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson 
of  St.  James's,  Westminster,  Knight,  Colonel  of  the  King's 
American  Regiment  of  Light  Dragoons,  and  Fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society  of  London,  late  Under-Secretary  of  State  of  the 
Province  of  Georgia,  and  Colonel  of  a  Regiment  of  Militia  in 
the  Province  of  New  Hampshire,  in  North  America,  Son  of 
Benjamin  Thompson,  late  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts 
Bay,  in  New  England,  Gent.,  deceased,  is  of  one  of  the  most 
antient  Families  in  North  America  ;  that  an  Island  which  be- 
longed to  his  Ancestors,  at  the  Entrance  of  Boston  Harbour, 
near  where  the  first  New  England  Settlement  was  made,  still 
bears  his  Name  ;  that  his  Ancestors  have  ever  lived  in  reputable 
Situations  in  that  Country  where  he  was  born,  and  have  hitherto 
used  the  Arms  of  the  antient  and  respectable  Family  of  Thomp- 
son of  the  County  of  York,  from  a  constant  Tradition  that 
they  derived  their  Descent  from  that  Source.  Arid  Whereas, 
at  a  very  early  Period  of  the  late  Troubles  in  North  America, 
the  said  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson  having  engaged  warmly  in 
support  of  the  British  Government  in  that  Country,  and  in  the 
course  of  the  War  been  distinguished  for  his  good  Conduct  and 
Bravery  in  the  Line  of  his  Profession,  and  recently  received  a 
very  honorable  Mark  of  His  Majesty's  Approbation  and  Fa- 
vor, the  Most  Honorable  Charles  Howard,  Esquire,  commonly 
called  Earl  of  Surrey,  Deputy,  with  the  Royal  Approbation  to 
his  Father,  the  Most  Noble  Charles,  Duke  of  Norfolk,  Earl 
Marshal  and  hereditary  Marshal  of  England,  hath  been  pleased 
by  Warrant  under  his  Hand  and  Seal,  bearing  date  the  twenty- 
third  Day  of  April  last,  to  authorise  and  direct  Us  to  grant  and 
confirm  to  the  said  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson  such  Variations  in 
the  Armorial  Bearings  of  Thompson  as  may  distinguish  him  and 
his  Descendants  from  all  others  of  the  Name.  Know  ye, 
therefore,  that  We  the  said  Garter  and  Clarenceux,  in  pur- 
suance of  his  Lordship's  Consent,  and  by  Virtue  of  the  Letters 
Patent  of  our  several  Offices,  to  each  of  Us  respectively 
granted  under  the  Great  Seal  of  Great  Britain,  do  by  these 


160  Life  of  Cotmt  Rumford. 

Presents  grant  and  confirm  to  the  said  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson, 
in  testimony  of  his  Merits  and  Services,  the  Arms  distinguished 
as  follows  ;  that  is  to  say :  Per  P^ess  Argent  and  Sable,  a 
Fess  embattled,  counter-embattled,  counter-changed  between 
two  Falcons,  in  chief  of  the  second  beaked,  membered,  and 
belled  Or,  and  a  Horse  passant  in  base  of  the  first.  And  for 
Crest  on  a  Wreath  of  the  Colours,  A  Mural  Crown  Or,  thereon 
a  Mullet  of  six  points  Azure,  and  between  the  Battlements  four 
Pine  Buds  Vert  as  the  same  are  in  the  Margin  hereof  more 
plainly  depicted,  to  be  borne  and  used  forever  hereafter  by  him, 
the  said  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson,  Knight,  and  his  Descendants, 
with  due  and  proper  Differences  according  to  the  Laws  of  Arms, 
without  Let  or  Interruption  of  any  Person  or  Persons  whatso- 
ever. In  Witness  whereof  We,  the  said  Garter  and  Claren- 
ceux  Kings  of  Arms,  have  to  these  Presents  subscribed  our 
Names  and  affixed  the  seals  of  our  several  Offices,  this  thirty- 
first  Day  of  May,  in  the  twenty-fourth  Year  of  the  Reign  of 
our  Sovereign  Lord  George  the  Third,  by  the  Grace  of  God 
King  of  Great  Britain,  France,  and  Ireland,  Defender  of  the 
Faith,  &c.,  and  in  the  Year  of  our  Lord  One  thousand  seven 
hundred  and  eighty-four." 

With  a  continuance  of  his  half-pay  as  a  British  offi- 
cer, and  with  a  title  of  honor,  both  of  which  would  be 
sure  to  win  him  consideration  on  the  Continent  of 
Europe,  this  soldier  of  fortune  entered,  at  Munich,  in 
the  spring  of  1784,  on  the  service  of  the  Elector.  In 
the  vigor  of  his  manhood,  and  now  with  a  trained  arn- 
^bition,  perhaps  quickened  by  the  splendid  career  of  his 
countryman  Franklin,  he  had  great  opportunities  and 
abilities  to  improve  and  increase  them. 

We  derive  the  best  and  most  authentic  account  of  the 
many  and  various  and  most  remarkable  labors  to  which 
Sir  Benjamin  Thompson  devoted  himself  so  assiduously 
and  continuously  in  the  service  of  the  Elector  from  his 
own  incidental  references  to  them,  as  well  as  from  the 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  161 

results  of  them  as  given  in  his  Essays.  These  labors 
ranged  from  subjects  of  the  homeliest  nature  in  their 
bearings  upon  the  thrift,  economy,  and  comfort  of  life 
for  the  poorest  classes,  through  enterprises  of  wide- 
extended  and  radical  reform  and  comprehensive  be- 
nevolence, up  to  the  severest  tests  and  experiments  in 
the  interests  of  practical  science.  Eleven  years  were  to 
pass  before  he  returned  to  England,  —  then,  too,  only  for 
a  visit,  for  the  purpose  of  publishing  the  rich  results  of 
all  his  devoted  and  multiplied  efforts.  He  was  most 
favorably  situated,  alike  amid  circumstances  calling  for 
and  admitting  of  his  wonderful  reformatory  and  benevo- 
lent zeal,  and  with  just  such  patronage  and  sympathy 
from  the  head  of  the  government  as  would  secure  for 
his  schemes  the  means  for  giving  them  full  and  favora- 
ble trial.  The  Elector  was  from  first  to  last  his  con- 
stant friend,  never  thwarting  him,  never  holding  back 
his  aid ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  ready  always  to  advance 
every  plan  of  his,  and  to  espouse  his  views  when  ques- 
tioned or  opposed  by  other  counsellors. 

When,  on  the  ist  of  July,  1796,  Sir  Benjamin  signed 
the  Dedication  of  his  Essays  for  publication  in  London, 
—  that  Dedication,  of  course,  being  by  permission, — 
"To  His  Most  Serene  Highness  The  Elector  Palatine, 
Reigning  Duke  of  Bavaria,  &c.,  &c.,  &c,"  he  gratefully 
acknowledges  his  obligations  thus  :  — 

"  In  requesting  permission  to  dedicate  to  your  most  Serene 
Electoral  Highness  these  Essays,  I  had  several  important  ob- 
jects in  view.  I  was  desirous  of  showing  to  the  world  that  I 
had  not  presumed  to  publish  an  account  of  public  measures  and 
institutions,  planned  and  executed  in  your  Electoral  Highness' 
dominions, — by  your  orders  and  under  your  immediate  au- 
thority and  protection,  —  without  your  leave  and  approbation, 
ii 


1 62  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

I  was  also  desirous  of  availing  myself  of  the  illustrious  name  of  a 
Sovereign  eminently  distinguished  by  his  munificence  in  pro- 
moting useful  knowledge,  and  by  his  solicitude  for  the  happiness 
and  prosperity  of  his  subjects,  to  recommend  the  important  ob- 
jects I  have  undertaken  to  investigate  to  the  attention  of  the 
Great,  the  Wise,  and  the  Benevolent.  And  lastly,  I  was 
anxious  to  have  an  opportunity  of  testifying,  in  a  public  manner, 
my  gratitude  to  your  most  Serene  Electoral  Highness  for  all 
your  kindness  to  me  ;  and  more  especially  for  the  distinguished 
honour  you  have  done  me  by  selecting  and  employing  me  as  an 
instrument  in  your  hands  of  doing  good." 

I  have  thus  anticipated  the  felicitous  consummation 
of  great  labors  and  enterprises  of  benevolence,  and  of 
a  devoted  friendship  founded  .upon  the  relations  of 
patron  and  agent  in  the  doing  of  them,  as  a  proper  pref- 
ace to  a  brief  account  of  those  labors  in  detail. 

On  the  arrival  of  Sir  Benjamin,  the  Elector  appointed 
him  colonel  of  a  regiment  of  cavalry,  and  General  Aide- 
de-Camp,  in  order  that  he  might  be  in  immediate  con- 
tact with  himself.  A  palatial  edifice  was  furnished  for 
his  residence  in  Munich,  shared  between  himself  and 
the  Russian  Ambassador,  with  a  military  staff  and  a 
proper  corps  of  servants.  Sir  Benjamin  especially 
prided  himself  upon  the  blood  horses  which  he  had 
brought  with  him  from  England.  His  fine  appearance 
when  mounted  on  parade  is  frequently  noticed.  His 
imposing  figure,  his  manly  and  handsome  countenance, 
his  dignity  of  bearing,  and  his  courteous  manners,  not 
only  to  the  great,  but  equally  to  subordinates  and 
inferiors,  made  him  exceedingly  popular.  This  finished 
courtier  and  favored  child  of  fortune  —  favored  both  by 
native  gifts  and  by  opportunities  —  needed  no  trans- 
formation within  or  without  to  adapt  himself  to  cir- 
cumstances. He  had  not  exactly,  as  Cuvier  says  of 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  163 

him  at  this  critical  stage  in  his  life,  "just  issued  from 
the  forests  of  the  New  World."  He  had  passed  his 
thirtieth  year,  having  spent  nearly  one  decade  of  his 
life  amid  scenes,  objects,  and  companionships  advanced 
by  a  considerable  grade  in  civilization,  culture,  and 
refinement  above  those  with  which  he  was  now  to  be 
conversant.  Nor,  indeed,  had  his  American  home  been 
in  a  wilderness.  He  had  known  men  and  women  in 
Salem,  Cambridge,  and  Boston  who  would  not  have 
appeared  to  disadvantage  in  any  European  society. 
His  position,  surroundings,  and  duties,  as  well  as  his 
official  and  personal  relations,  differed  much  from  those 
of  Franklin,  about  the  same  time  at  the  court  of  France. 
But  the  elder  philosopher  accomplished  his  great  work  no 
more  successfully  than  did  Sir  Benjamin  his,  nor  would 
the  former  more  patiently  or  more  effectively  have  per- 
fected than  did  the  latter  the  details  and  enterprises  of 
so  many  by  no  means  inviting  but  most  beneficent 
schemes. 

Sir  Benjamin  very  rapidly  acquired  a  mastery  of  the 
German  and  French  languages.  Like  a  true  practical 
philosopher,  also,  he  gave  the  whole  force  of  his  in- 
quisitive and  comprehensive  mind  to  the  preliminary 
work  of  informing  himself  generally,  and  in  minute 
particulars,  about  everything  that  concerned  the  do- 
minions of  the  Elector.  The  relations  of  the  Elector- 
ate to  other  powers,  within  and  outside  of  the  empire; 
its  population  and  their  employments ;  its  resources 
and  the  means  of  their  development;  the  abuses  and 
evils  which  admitted  of  remedies,  and  the  method  of 
applying  them,  —  all  found  in  him  as  curious  and  intelli-\ 
gent  an  investigator  as  could  have  been  chosen  among 
the  select  few  most  concerned  to  examine  them.  If,  as 


164  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

a  military  man,  he  might  have  been  prompted  to  excite 
and  guide  in  his  sovereign  any  ambitious  schemes  for 
extending  his  domains  or  securing  a  fuller  indepen- 
dence of  control  by  the  great  powers,  he  would  have 
been  precluded  from  everything  of  this  sort  by  the  then 
established  order  of  affairs,  which  left  Bavaria  only  a 
chance  to  lose,  with  no  prospect  of  gain  from  any  con- 
ceivable change.  Sir  Benjamin  very  soon  learned  that 
the  development  of  resources  and  the  reform  of  abuses 
were  the  emergent  needs  of  the  Electorate,  and  would 
furnish  an  abundant  and  rewarding  field  for  his  special 
abilities.  The  Bavarian  princes  ever  since  the  Refor- 
mation had  found  their  apparent  security  and  prosperity 
to  be  identified  with  allegiance  and  devotion  to  the 
Roman  Church  and  Catholicism.  The  Electorate  was 
under  the  oppressive  influence  of  a  priesthood,  and 
the  people,  submitting  to  their  dictation,  acquiesced  in 
the  thriftlessness  and  the  burdens  thus  imposed  upon 
them.  The  very  name  of  Munich  or  Munchen,  derived 
from  Monks,  carries  with  it  an  historical  fact  which  had 
made  a  mark  deep  and  permanent  in  the  capital  of  the 
Electorate.  As  Cuvier  says,  "  Its  sovereigns  had  en- 
couraged devotion  and  made  no  stipulation  in  favor  of 
industry.  There  were  more  convents  than  manufac- 
tories in  their  States ;  their  army  was  almost  a  shadow, 
while  ignorance  and  idleness  were  conspicuous  in  every 
class  of  society."  There  was  no  State  in  Christendom 
at  the  time  which  offered  a  fairer  field  for  the  economi- 
cal and  reformatory  enterprise  of  a  man  with  the  genius 
and  proclivities  of  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson,  with  a 
training  in  the  frugal  and  thrifty  ways  of  New  -.England 
during  the  second  stage  of  its  own  development. 

He  never  seems  to  have  become  involved,  either  in 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  165 

his  private  relations  or  in  the  most  radical  and  revo- 
lutionizing of  his  schemes,  with  any  religious  animosi- 
ties. Besides  his  frequent  avowals  of  a  religious  faith, 
and  his-  devout  references  to  God  in  connection  with 
his  scientific  and  benevolent  pursuits,  he  often  speaks 
of  himself  as  an  avowed  Protestant,  and  as  finding  no 
opposition  or  loss  of  regard  on  that  score. 

It  may  be  as  well  to  mention  here  the  titular,  mili- 
tary, civil,  and  academic  honors  which  so  rapidly  and 
lavishly  were  bestowed  upon  Sir  Benjamin  while  residing 
in  Bavaria.  By  request  of  the  Elector,  the  King  of 
Poland,  in  1786,  conferred  on  him  the  Order  of  Saint 
Stanislaus,  the  statutes  of  Bavaria  not  then  allowing 
of  his  receiving  the  Bavarian  orders.  In  a  journey 
to  Prussia,  in  1787,  he  was  made  a  member  of  the 
Academy  of  Berlin.  He  was  also  admitted  to  the 
Academies  of  Science  at  Munich  and  Mannheim.  In 
1788  the  Elector  made  him  Major-General  of  cavalry 
and  Privy  Councillor  of  State.  He  was  also  put 
at  the  head  of  the  War  Department,  with  powers  and 
directions  from  the  Elector  to  carry  into  effect  the 
schemes  which  he  had  been  maturing  for  the  reform 
of  the  army  and  the  removal  of  mendicity.  In  the 
interval  between  the  death  of  the  Emperor  Joseph  and 
the  coronation  of  Leopold  II.,  the  Elector  profited  by 
the  right  going  with  his  functions  as  Vicar  of  the  Em- 
pire to  raise  Sir  Benjamin,  in  1791,  to  the  dignity  of  a 
Count  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  with  the  Order  of 
the  White  Eagle.'  That  he  should  have  selected  as  his 
title  marking  this  distinction  the  former  name  of  the 
New  England  village  in  which  he  had  first  enjoyed  the 
favors  of  fortune,  shows  that  he  was  not  alienated  in 
heart  from  his  native  land,  and  that  he  gladly  associated 


1 66  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

the  memory  of  it  with  his  own  personal  advancement. 
There  were  many  to  say  of  him,  during  the  remainder 
of  his  life,  that  he  was  even  vainly  fond  of  his  titles,, 
and  claimed  the  social  position  which  his  services  se- 
cured to  him  as  at  least  an  equivalent  for  the  noble 
birth  and  the  inheritance  of  land  which  ordinarily  carry 
with  them  titular  honors  independently  of  character  or 
achievement.  This  is  true.  He  prized  the  mark  of 
dignity  which  was  attached  to  his  name,  and  was  grati- 
fied that  he  could  transmit  it  to  his  daughter.  The 
inheritors  of  such  shadowy  titles  should  be  the  first  to 
manifest  their  approbation  that  a  substance  is  occasion- 
ally secured  to  them  as  being  won  by  merit. 

With  the  united  offices  of  Minister  of  War,  and 
Minister  or  Superintendent  of  Police,  and  Chamber- 
lain of  the  Elector,  Sir  Benjamin  combined  adminis- 
trative and  executive  functions  which  substantially  cov- 
ered every  department  of  public  service.  Some  tra- 
ditionary or  conventional  prejudices  or  proprieties 
withheld  the  Elector  from  seeking  or  accepting  such 
advice  from  his  own  Council  as  he  felt  more  free  to 
ask  and  receive  from  a  foreigner  who  had  won  his  title 
to  consideration.  It  might,  of  course,  be  foreseen  that 
such  privileges  as  were  granted  to  Thompson,  how- 
ever judiciously  and  unselfishly  improved  to  public 
ends  of  beneficence,  would  excite  against  him  jealousies, 
if  not  opposition,  from  some  on  whose  supposed  pre- 
rogatives he  might  infringe.  Though  later  in  his  career 
in  Germany,  and  under  a  change  in  the  headship  of  the 
government,  he  did  not,  as  we  shall  see,  escape  his 
share  in  a  common  experience  of  this  kind,  he  seems  to 
have  encountered  the  very  least  of  it  at  the  time  when  it 
would  have  been  most  disagreeable  and  embarrassing  to 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  167 

him.  Rather  did  he  find  sympathy  and  aid,  and  that 
to  a  somewhat  remarkable  degree,  in  the  officials  and 
subordinates,  civil  and  military,  and  even  ecclesiastical, 
in  his  very  radical  dealing  with  abuses. 

The  richly  embellished  city  of  Munich,  on  which, 
with  its  tripled  population,  dating  after  the  middle  of 
this  century,  the  munificent  King  Louis  lavished  his 
patronage  of  art,  is  a  very  different  place  from  what  it 
was  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  last  century,  when  Thomp- 
son was  its  most  distinguished  and  influential  citizen. 
The  curse  of  all  the  States  of  the  Continent  at  that 
time,  as  it  has  since  been,  was  the  standing  army  with 
its  incessant  recruiting  by  conscription.  The  rural 
population,  which  should  have  tilled  the  fields  and 
pursued  the  manifold  labors  of  domestic  and  mechani- 
cal industry,  was  drained  of  its  element  of  vigor,  and 
then  demoralized,  by  the  return  into  it  from  time  to 
time  of  its  furloughed  or  relieved  bands  of  lazy  loiter- 
ers, incapacitated  for,  while  they  despised,  work. 
Thompson  soon  found  that  the  root  of  all  the  diffi- 
culties which  he  aimed  to  reach  and  remove  lay  in 
this  matter  of  the  army.  But  he  had  to  proceed  with 
caution,  as  he  already  had  knowledge  that  the  worst 
abuses  have  always  the  most  unprincipled  and  malig- 
nant supporters  interested  in  their  undisturbed  allow- 
ance. In  none  of  the  incidents  of  his  remarkably 
diversified  life,  and  in  none  of  his  vast,  comprehen- 
sive, and  benevolent  undertakings,  does  the  character 
of  Thompson  show  itself  to  higher  advantage,  on  the 
score  of  wisdom,  patient  effort,  and  magnanimity,  than 
in  the  course  which  he  pursued  in  Bavaria,  dealing  with 
enormous  evils  in  the  spirit  of  prudence  and  mildness, 
while  still  with  a  thoroughness  of  remedy.  He  spent 


1 68  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

four  full  years  at  Munich  before  he  ventured  to  put  on 
trial  either  of  the  great  reforms,  or  to  initiate  either  of 
the  great  institutions,  which  he  had  been  quietly  plan- 
ning. The  pay  of  the  soldiers  being  but  threepence 
a  day,  their  arms,  clothing,  and  quarters  being  of  the 
meanest  sort,  yet  involving  wasteful  expense,  and  the 
system  of  tactics  and  discipline  being  unnecessarily 
burdensome,  as  well  as  inefficient,  he  made  reform  in 
these  matters  the  object  of  his  most  earnest  efforts. 
The  officers,  who  regarded  themselves  as  the  owners  of 
the  common  soldiers,  as  if  themselves  masters  of  slaves, 
were  likely  to  withstand  all  innovations.  Thompson 
showed  a  marvellous  tact  in  winning  some  of  the  least 
indifferent  of  these  officers  to  co-operate  with  him  in  a 
way  which  seemed  to  indicate  that  they  themselves  were 
instigating  a  reform.  There  was  a  foundry  for  cannon 
at  Mannheim,  and  here  Thompson  made  some  of  his 
first  experiments  on  heat.  He  built  another  foundry 
at  Munich,  with  greatly  improved  machinery. 

We  are  to  remember,  while  recognizing  the  subjects 
and  the  methods  of  his  economical  reforms,  that,  when 
pursuing  them,  he  never  failed  to  aid  them, all  by  his 
severest  scientific  experiments. 

Though,  when  we  come  shortly  to  sketch  some  of  the 
more  remarkable  results  of  these  four  years  of  prepara- 
tion in  the  Institutions  established  by  him  in  Bavaria, 
we  might  suppose  that  the  work  had  been  necessarily  so 
absorbing  that  Thompson  must  have  given  over  his 
favorite  philosophical  pursuits,  we  must  set  this  infer- 
ence aside.  Science  and  philosophy,  in  his  view,  lay  at 
the  foundation  of  all  reformatory,  economical,  and 
benevolent  enterprises,  however  homely  the  matters 
which  they  concerned.  In  all  the  Institutions  which  he 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  169 

successfully  planned,  he  introduced,  indeed  he  depended 
mainly  upon,  some  facilities  of  process,  or  means  of 
diminishing  expense,  which  he  had  mastered  by  his  own 
severely  scientific  investigations.  In 'the  Philosophical 
Transactions  of  the  Royal  Society,  published  periodi- 
cally in  England,  during  his  first  eleven  years'  absence 
on  the  Continent,  are  found  papers  of  his,  for  the 
most  part  addressed  to  his  friend,  Sir  Joseph  Banks, 
the  President.  They  record  Thompson's  Experiments 
on  Heat;  Experiments  on  the  Production  of  Dephlo- 
gisticated  Air  from  Water,  with  various  Substances ; 
Experiments  made  to  determine  the  Positive  and  Rela- 
tive Quantities  of  Moisture  absorbed  from  the  Atmos- 
phere by  Various  Substances  under  Similar  Circum- 
stances; Further  Experiments  on  Heat;  An  Account 
of  a  Method  of  measuring  the  Comparative  Intensities 
of  the  Light  emitted  by  Luminous  Bodies ;  and  An 
Account  of  some  Experiments  on  Colored  Shadows. 
These  had  appeared  in  print  before  his  return  to  Eng- 
land. His  membership  of  the  Scientific  and  Literary 
Academies  of  Berlin,  Munich,  and  Mannheim  also 
required  of  him  to  keep  himself  in  communication  with 
their  officers  or  members.  Indeed,  he  was  attaining  his 
high  repute  as  a  philosopher  while  he  was  most  en- 
grossed in  seemingly  inconsistent  labors.  Thompson's 
first  experimental  Institution  was  the  Military  Work- 
house at  Mannheim.  This  he  undertook  and  estab- 
lished under  some  peculiar  difficulties  and  obstacles, 
additional  to  those  for  which  he  was  prepared.  He 
regarded  it  as  only  partially  successful,  and  he  improved 
upon  it  greatly  in  the  one  at  Munich.  The  marshes 
cf  Mulhau,  near  Mannheim,  which  till  then  had  been 
only  unwholesome  bogs,  worthless  for  culture  and 


170  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

ruinous  to  the  health  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  city, 
were  connected  by  embankments,  surrounded  by  a 
mole,  and  transformed  into  a  fertile  garden,  devoted 
to  the  industry  of  the  garrison.  The  corresponding 
Military  Academy  at  Munich  was  founded  in  1789. 
A  military  cordon  was  formed,  as  is  soon  to  be  more 
particularly  stated,  in  order  to  free  the  country  from 
vagabonds. 

•In  his  first  and  most  elaborate  economical  Essay, 
which  gives  an  account  of  his  Establishment  for  the 
Poor  at  Munich,  "  together  with  a  detail  of  various 
public  measures  connected  with  that  Institution,  which 
have  been  adopted  and  carried  into  effect  for  putting  an 
end  to  mendicity,  and  introducing  order  and  useful 
industry  among  the  more  indigent  of  the  inhabitants 
of  Bavaria,"  Sir  Benjamin  recognizes  very  pleasantly 
and  gratefully,  and  not  without  a  degree  of  compla- 
cency, his  confidential  relations  with  the  Elector.  We 
must  allow,  however,  for  the  eleven  years  of  severe 
disciplinary  work  which  had  passed,  up  to  the  date  of 
the  publication  of  his  Essays,  'in  order  to  justify  his 
tone,  like  that  of  a  well-worn  veteran,  if  not  a  mentor. 
He  begins  thus:  — 

"  Among  the  vicissitudes  of  a  life  chequered  by  a  great  variety 
of  incidents,  and  in  which  I  have  been  called  upon  to  act  in 
many  interesting  scenes,  I  have  had  an  opportunity  of  employ- 
ing my  attention  upon  a  subject  of  great  importance,  —  a  subject 
intimately  and  inseparably  connected  with  the  happiness  and 
well-being  of  all  civil  societies,  and  which,  from  its  nature,  can- 
not fail  to  interest  every  benevolent  mind, — it  is  the  providing 
for  the  wants  of  the  Poor,  and  securing  their  happiness  and  com- 
fort by  the  introduction  of  order  and  industry  among  them." 

Sir  Benjamin  recognizes,  as  so  many  philanthropists 


Life  of  Count  Rzmford.  171 

and  statesmen  have  done  since,  and  —  never  with  more 
perplexity  and  baffled  wisdom  —  are  doing  now,  the  terri- 
ble problems  presented  by  pauperism  in  every  state, 
however  otherwise  flourishing.  In  his  time  he  might 
well  say  that  the  subject  had  not  been  investigated  with 
any  just  degree  of  interest  or  success.  To  him  belongs 
the  high  honor  of  a  leader  in  gaining  a  direct  and  most 
practical  mastery  of  its  painful  and  often  revolting  de- 
tails, and  in  devising  as  efficient  a  system  for  preven- 
tion, abatement,  and  remedy  of  its  evils  as  has  ever 
been  proposed  and  put  on  trial.  The  prevalence  of 
indolence,  misery,  and  beggary  in  almost  all  the  coun- 
tries of  Europe  at  that  time  was  painfully  realized  and 
mourned  over  by  all  who  gave  the  subject  but  a  super- 
ficial consideration.  Yet  there  was  no  harmony  of 
opinion,  and  very  little  co-operation  in  effort  for  the 
removal  of  these  evils,  even  among  those  who  most 
lamented  them.  Within  a  short  time  after  Sir  Benja- 
min had  left  England  for  Munich,  a  society  was  formed 
in  London  for  bettering  the  condition  of  the  poor. 
One,  if  not  more,  of  his  most  intimate  friends,  Thomas 
Bernard,  Esq.,  was  the  leading  spirit  of  this  enterprise. 
He  corresponded  with  Thompson  while  he  was  in  Ba- 
varia, and,  as  we  shall  afterwards  have  occasion  to  note, 
this  friendly  intercourse  in  one  good  cause  guided  and 
facilitated  another  and  most  signal  undertaking  of 
Thompson's  in  England. 

He  was  able  to  say  that  what  he  had  to  offer  on  the 
subject  of  pauperism  was  not  speculation,  but  the  genu- 
ine result  of  actual  experiments  made  on  a  very  large 
scale,  and  under  peculiarly  interesting  circumstances. 
He  thinks  that  the  account  which  he  offers  will  furnish 
amusement,  as  well  as  useful  information.  Not  for- 


172  Life  of  Count  Rumford* 

getting  that  he  was  a  military  man,  he  feels  bound  to 
explain  the  way  and  the  motives  which  engaged  him  in 
an  object  seemingly  foreign  to  his  profession.  This 
explanation  is  found  in  the  connection  which  proved 
to  exist  between  the  many  different  measures  for  the 
promotion  of  the  public  welfare  which  had  occupied 
him. 

He  says  that,  among  the  various  public  services  which 
the  Elector  asked  of  him,  he  was  particularly  charged 
with  the  arrangement  of  his  military  affairs  in  intro- 
ducing a  new  system  of  order,  discipline,  and  economy 
among  his  troops.  Knowing  very  well  the  injury  to 
the  population,  morals,  manufactures.,  and  agriculture 
of  a  country  which  accrued  from  the  maintenance  of  a 
standing  military  force,  he  divined  that  the  most 
practicable  mode  of  relief  from,  or  of  a  limitation  of, 
this  mischief,  would  be  found  "in  making  soldiers  citi- 
zens, and  citizens  soldiers."  The  situation  of  the  sol- 
dier was  to  be  made  as  easy,  agreeable,  and  eligible  as 
possible ;  his  pay  was  to  be  increased,  he  was  to  be 
comfortably  and  even  elegantly  clothed,  allowed  all 
liberty  consistent  with  order  and  subordination,  with 
simpler  military  instruction,  and  to  be  relieved  of  all 
obsolete  and  useless  customs.  His  quarters  and  bar- 
racks were  to  be  made  neat  and  clean  within,  and 
attractive  on  the  outside.  Schools  were  to  be  estab- 
lished, in  all  the  regiments,  for  teaching  reading,  writing, 
and  arithmetic.  And  not  only  the  oldiers,  but  their 
children,  and  the  children  of  the  neighboring  peasants, 
were  to  be  taught  here  gratuitously ;  school-books, 
paper,  pens,  and  ink  being  furnished  by  the  Sovereign. 
With  true  Franklinian  economy,  Thompson  adds  that 
the  paper  which  had  thus  served  one  use  would  really 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  173 

come  free  of  cost  for  such  use  to  the  government,  as  it 
might  serve  afterwards  for  making  cartridges. 

Regarding  habitual  idleness,  especially  that  of  sol- 
diers in  their  quarters,  as  most  fatal  to  morals,  Thomp- 
son's scheme  comprised  not  only  schools  of  instruction, 
but  also  houses  of  industry.  The  soldiers  and  their 
children  were  to  have  the  raw  material  for  various  kinds 
of  work  furnished  them,  when  off  duty,  .and  they  were 
to  dispose  of  the  results  of  their  labor  without  account- 
ing to  anybody.  Besides  being  allowed  to  retain  their 
old  uniforms,  they  were  supplied  gratis  with  working- 
suits  of  strong  canvas.  It  was  found  that  they  could 
earn  by  their  industry  between  three  and  four  times  as 
much  as  their  pay.  The  soldiers  were  put  to  employ- 
ment as  laborers  in  all  public  works,  like  making  and 
repairing  roads,  draining  marshes,  and  repairing  the  banks 
of  rivers  ;  while  a  band  of  music  would  often  be  pro- 
vided to  inspirit  their  work,  and  sports,  games,  and 
various  amusements  were  encouraged  for  their  holidays. 
Paid  officers  were  sent  to  oversee  them  when  detached 
in  working  parties.  A  large  number  of  the  soldiers  in 
garrison  were  allowed  to  be  absent  in  rotation  at  their 
country  homes  for  ten  and  a  half  months  in  each  year, 
where  they  might  mingle  with  the  peasantry,  help  re- 
cruiting, and  apply  themselves  to  agriculture  and  manu- 
factures. The  regimental  garrisons  were  made  perma- 
nent, that  soldiers  might  be  near  their  homes,  —  a 
measure  that  was  very  advantageous  on  account  of  the 
scarcity  of  husbandmen.  It  was  through  the  soldiers 
trained  in  the  garrisons  to  industry  and  skill  that 
Thompson  expected  to  extend  useful  improvements 
over  the  whole  country.  Though  in  some  parts  of  the 
Elector's  domains  agriculture  was  carried  to  great  per- 


174  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

fection  at  that  time,  yet  it  was  very  backward  in  Ba- 
varia, very  many  improvements  not  having  been  intro- 
duced, many  profitable  plants  being  unknown,  the 
potato,  clover,  and  turnip  being  scarcely  to  be  seen, 
and  the  rotation  of  crops  neglected. 

Thompson  planned  a  military  garden  in  connection 
with  each  garrison  for  the  special  purpose  of  intro- 
ducing the  culture  of  potatoes.  These  were  exclusively 
appropriated  to  the  non-commissioned  officers  and  pri- 
vates, each  one  having  a  bed  of  three  hundred  and 
sixty-five  square  feet,  which  was  his,  and  the  produce 
of  which  he  could  dispose  of,  so  long  as  he  would  till  it. 
Neatly  gravelled  alleys  between  these  cultivated  plots 
made  them  pleasant  places  of  resort.  The  agreeable 
and  beneficent  results  of  these  arrangements  were  realized 
sooner,  and  even  more  widely,  than  the  planner  of  them 
could  have  hoped.  Indolent  soldiers  became  model 
laborers,  proud  of  their  task  and  its  fruits.  They  were 
seen  collecting  manure  in  the  streets,  besides  using  what 
was  furnished  them.  Little  gardens  fashioned  by  the 
soldiers  on  their  furloughs  sprang  up  all  over  the 
country,  as  each  one  carried  home  with  him  garden- 
seeds  and  potatoes.  The  use  of  the  latter,  as  of  many 
other  vegetables  for  food,  became  universal.  The 
officers,  meanwhile,  were  ordered  to  give  the  soldiers 
every  facility,  and  never  to  exact  any  emolument  from 
them. 

Besides  the  direct  objects  of  improving  the  condi- 
tion and  raising  the  character  of  the  soldiers  which 
were  effected  by  the  measures  thus  described,  Sir  Benja- 
min had  in  view  a  further  purpose,  in  securing  a  very 
potent  agency  for  advancing  the  most  difficult  and  com- 
prehensive of  all  his  benevolent  schemes.  He  intended 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  175 

to  make  use  of  these  reformed  soldiers  in  grappling 
with  and  suppressing  the  enormous  evils  connected 
with  mendicity  in  Bavaria.  This  was,  at  the  time,  a 
stupendous  and  organized  system  of  abuses,  which, 
gradually  growing  upon  the  tolerance  of  the  govern- 
ment and  the  people,  had  reached  such  proportions,  and 
had  established  itself  with  such  a  vigorous  power  of 
mischief,  as  to  be  acquiesced  in  as  irremediable.  There 
were,  indeed,  laws  in  each  community  which  provided 
for  the  support  of  the  poor,  but  they  were  utterly  in- 
effective. Beggars  and  vagabonds,  the  larger  part  of 
whom  were  also  thieves,  swarmed  all  over  the  country, 
especially  in  the  cities.  These  were  not  only  natives, 
but  foreigners.  They  were  of  both  sexes  and  all  ages. 
They  strolled  in  all  directions,  lining  the  highways, 
levying  contributions  with  clamorous  demands,  enter- 
ing houses,  stores,  and  workshops  to  rob,  interrupting 
the  devotions  of  the  churches  with  their  exactions,  and 
extorting  everywhere  through  fear  what  they  failed  to 
get  by  importunity.  These  swarms  of  mendicants  and 
freebooters  were  in  the  main  composed  of  stout,  -strong, 
healthy,  and  able-bodied  persons,  who  preferred  an  easy 
life  of  indolence  to  any  kind  of  industry.  They  had 
become  the  terror  and  the  scourge  of  the  country. 
"  These  detestable  vermin  had  recourse  to  the  most 
diabolical  arts  and  the  most  horrid  crimes  in  the  prose- 
cution of  their  infamous  trade."  They  would  steal, 
maim,  and  expose  little  children,  and  compel  them  to 
extort  by  their  piteous  appeals  a  fixed  sum  for  a  day's 
gatherings,  with  the  threat  of  an  inhuman  punishment 
if  they  failed.  Every  attempt  to  suppress  this  system 
of  outrages  having  been  thwarted,  the  community  had 
learned  to  submit  and  conform  to  it  as  admitting  of  no 


176  Life  of  Co^tnt  Rumford. 

relief;  and  this  wretched  tolerance  seemed  to  double  the 
number  of  these  vagabonds,  while  it  raised  beggary  into 
a  profession.  Even  herdsmen  and  shepherds,  tending 
their  flocks  by  the  wayside,  were  in  the  habit  of  levying 
contributions  on  passers-by,  and  their  opportunity  to 
do  this  was  had  in  view  in  fixing  the  rate  of  their  wages 
from  their  employers.  Farm  children,  too  young  to 
labor,  were  improved  as  mendicants,  —  and  a  traveller 
seemed  to  have  his  road  lined  with  outstretched  hands. 

The  beggars  formed  a  caste  in  the  cities,  with  pro- 
fessional rules,  assigning  to  them  beats  and  districts, 
which  were  disposed  of  by  regulations  in  case  of  the 
death,  promotion,  or  removal  of  the  proprietors. 
Sometimes  a  fight  decided  the  contested  right  to  a 
district.  Even  matrimonial  alliances  between  the  men- 
dicants, and  the  entail  of  the  privileges  of  the  profes- 
sion on  the  children  born  of  these  bargains,  were  a 
recognized  usage.  Thompson  observed  that  the  pro- 
fession of  a  beggar  was  a  training  for  thievery,  and  that 
there  was  really  no  difference  between  the  ways  used  for 
extorting  gifts  and  the  being  subjected  to  actual  plun- 
dering. He  tells  us  that  after  the  measures  which  are 
to  be  described  as  instituted  by  him  had  taken  effect, 
out  of  the  population  of  Munich,  then  about  sixty 
thousand,  as  many  as  two  thousand  six  hundred  beg- 
gars were  seized  in  a  single  week. 

These  measures  were  deliberate,  wise,  thorough,  and 
effective.  They  were  admirably  planned  and  carried 
into  the  most  minute  details.  Four  regiments  of  cav- 
alry were  cantoned  in  Bavaria  and  the  adjoining  prov- 
inces, so  that  even  every  village  had  a  patrol  party  of 
three,  four,  or  five  mounted  soldiers  daily  coursing 
from  one  station  to  another.  They  were  forbidden  to 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  177 

stop  at  any  peasant's  house  for  victuals,  or  to  demand 
forage.  Officers  and  subalterns  stationed  at  centres  in 
the  cantonments  were  so  distributed  that  they  could 
inspect  these  patrolmen,  and  a  general  officer,  after 
visiting  all  the  cantonments,  was  to  have  his  head- 
quarters at  Munich.  Printed  instructions  requiring 
regular  returns  from  the  lowest  up  to  the  highest  of  the 
ranks  and  the  staff  were  furnished,  and  extreme  care  was 
taken  to  prevent  any  collision  or  conflict  between  the 
civil  authorities  and  the  military.  The  soldiers  were 
also  to  convey  government  messages,  to  guard  the  fron- 
tiers, to  prevent  smuggling,  to  assist  at  conflagrations, 
and  to  pursue  and  apprehend  all  malefactors.  The  in- 
habitants of  each  district  were  to  be  at  the  expense  of 
providing  simple  quarters  for  the  soldiers,  but  the  cost 
was  so  carefully  restricted  that  the  whole  charge  for  the 
whole  country  for  one  year  was  but  £2yjlj. 

This  cantonment  of  the  cavalry  was  but  one  pre- 
paratory measure  planned  for  effecting  what  had  been 
resolved  cm,  —  a  general  and  simultaneous  seizure  of  all 
the  beggars  in  the  capital,  to  begin  with.  A  distinc- 
tion was  to  be  made,  from  the  first,  between  the  dis- 
posal and  treatment  of  aged  and  infirm  mendicants 
and  the  restraints  designed  for  the  sturdy  and  able- 
bodied  beggars.  Contributions  of  money  voluntarily 
made  by  the  inhabitants  were  essential,  to  obtain  which 
they  must  be  drawn  to  approve  the  plan  and  to  trust 
in  its  success.  This  condition  it  was  not  easy  to  se- 
cure ;  for  though  the  inhabitants,  tormented  by  men- 
dicity, would  most  readily  help  any  measure  promising 
to  remove  it  surely,  they  had  been  over  and  over  again 
disappointed  by  fruitless  essays  to  that  end.  Thomp- 
son determined  to  carry  out  his  scheme  before  asking 

12 


178  Life  of  Coimt  Rumford. 

general  pecuniary  aid  for  it,  and  also  to  enlist  in  it 
people  of  the  highest  rank.  He  organized  a  most 
efficient  bureau  as  a  police  over  the  poor,  in  order  to 
provide  relief  for  the  necessitous  and  the  opportunities 
of  profitable  industry  for  the  well  and  strong.  His 
committee  was  constituted  of  the  respective  presidents 
of  the  Council  of  War,  the  Council  of  the  Supreme 
Regency,  the  Ecclesiastical  Council,  and  the  Chamber 
of  Finances.  To  these  was  added  one  additional  coun- 
cillor from  each  of  these  departments,  and  offices  were 
provided  for  meetings,  with  a  secretary,  accountant, 
and  clerk,  and  the  police  guards  were  under  the  direc- 
tion of  the  committee.  The  members  were  all  without 
pay,  and  the  employees  were  remunerated  from  the 
Treasury,  so  as  not  to  draw  upon  the  Poor  Fund, 
which  was  intrusted  to  a  public  banker  of  the  city, 
Monsieur  Dallarmi. 

The  city  was  divided  into  sixteen  districts,  in  which 
every  dwelling,  palace  or  hovel,  was  numbered ;  and  a 
committee  of  charity  was  appointed  for  each,  'headed  by 
a  respectable  citizen,  assisted  by  a  priest,  a  physician,  a 
surgeon,  and  an  apothecary,  all  serving  without  pay,  to 
look  after  the  worthy  poor.  A  connection  was  estab- 
lished by  rotation  between  these  district  committees 
and  the  central  committee.  There  were  many  vested 
funds,  grants,  and  bequests  which  had  for  years  been 
nominally  consecrated  to  charity,  but  as  most  of  these 
had  been  reduced,  wasted,  or  misapplied,  Thompson 
determined  wisely  not  to  excite  the  opposition  or 
odium  which  he  might  incur  by  claiming  them.  He 
looked  for  support  from  the  Sovereign,  from  the  Treas- 
ury, from  subscriptions,  legacies,  and  small  revenues. 

To   provide   raw   material,  help,  oversight,   interest, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  179 

and  stimulus  for  engaging  common  beggars  seized  in 
the  streets  and  highways  in  the  pursuits  of  useful 
industry,  was  a  formidable  task,  next  in  order,  to  exer- 
cise Sir  Benjamin's  resources.  How  could  persons 
bred  up  in  lazy  and  dissolute  habits,  regardless  of  de- 
cency, and  callous  to  any  sense  of  shame,  be  turned  into 
happy  and  thrifty  workers  ?  Precepts  and  punishments 
would  be  sure  to  fail,  but  they  might  be  taught  habits. 
Thompson  ventured  to  reverse  the  maxim  that  people 
must  be  virtuous  if  they  would  be  happy,  and  he 
essayed  to  make  his  wretched  beggars  happy  as  a  step 
towards  making  them  virtuous.  He  therefore  devised 
for  them  comforts  and  appliances  to  soften  their  hearts 
and  make  them  docile  and  grateful.  His  experience 
led  him  to  write  down  the  ejaculation,  "Would  to  God 
that  my  success  might  encourage  others  to  follow  my 
example !  If  it  were  generally  known  how  little  trouble, 
and  how  little  expence,  are  required  to  do  much  good, 
c  the  heartfelt  satisfaction '  which  arises  from  relieving 
the  wants  and  promoting  the  happiness  of  our  fellow- 
creatures  is  so  great  that  I  am  persuaded  acts  of  the 
most  essential  charity  would  be  much  more  frequent, 
and  the  mass  of  misery  among  mankind  would  conse- 
quently be  much  lessened." 

Thompson  says  he  had  learned  from  the  brute  crea- 
tion, from  beasts  and  birds,  that  cleanliness  is  the 
first  condition  of  comfort.  He  had  noticed,  also,  that 
all  the  great  lawgivers  and  founders  of  religions  had  had 
regard  to  the  influence  of  cleanliness  on  the  moral 
nature  of  man,  thinking  the  soul  defiled  and  depraved 
by  everything  unclean.  He  adds,  cc  Virtue  never 
dwelt  long  with  filth  and  nastiness ;  nor  do  I  believe 
there  ever  was  a  person  scrupulously  attentive  to 


180  Life  of  Count  Rutnford. 

cleanliness  who  was  a  consummate  villain."  He  had 
now  to  deal  with  men  and  women  who  had  become 
habituated  to  being  covered  with  filth  and  vermin,  and 
who  had  slept  in  their  rags  in  the  streets  and  hedges. 
They  should  have  a  neat  and  commodious  building, 
well  warmed  and  lighted,  with  healthful  and  palatable 
food  and  good  beds.  Teachers,  materials,  and  utensils 
should  enable  them  to  work,  and  the  pay  for  it  should 
be  their  own.  There  should  be  no  harsh  language,  no  ill- 
usage.  The  founder  was  able  to  say,  after  a  five  years' 
operation  of  his  scheme,  that  not  a  blow  had  been  given 
even  to  a  child,  while  thrift  had  so  abundantly  followed 
from  it,  that  even  extra  rewards  had  been  granted  to  the 
deserving. 

Consulting  economy  in  every  stage  of  his  enterprise, 
Thompson  avoided,  what  to  most  schemers  in  similar 
undertakings  would  have  seemed  essential,  the  build- 
ing of  an  edifice,  at  considerable  cost,  with  reference  to 
the  improvements  and  conveniences  which  he  desired. 
In  one  of  the  suburbs  of  Munich,  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Iser,  called  Au,  was  a  deserted  structure,  once  a 
manufactory,  then  falling  into  decay.  He  caused  this 
to  be  thoroughly  repaired  and  enlarged,  adding  to  it  a 
kitchen,  refectory,  and  bakehouse,  with  workshops  for 
carpenters,  smiths,  turners,  and  other  mechanics  needed 
for  making  and  repairing  all  the  tools  and  machinery 
which  would  be  requisite  in  the  establishment.  Large 
halls  were  provided  for  spinners  of  flax,  hemp,  cotton, 
wool,  and  worsted,  with  an  office  attached  to  each  for  a 
clerk  or  overseer  of  the  department.  Through  a  win- 
dow connecting  each  hall  with  its  office,  raw  materials, 
finished  work,  and  accounts  for  labor  done,  were  given 
to  and  received  from  each  workman.  Another  series 


Life  of  Count  Ruinford.  181 

of  halls  was  fitted  up  for  weavers  in  all  the  depart- 
ments, and  for  clothiers,  cloth-shearers,  dyers,  saddlers, 
wool-sorters,  carders,  combers,  knitters,  seamstresses, 
&c.,  as  also  dwelling-rooms,  magazines,  store-rooms  for 
all  assorted  materials  and  goods,  and  rooms  for  the  offi- 
cers. There  was  likewise  a  spacious  drying-hall,  where 
eight  pieces  of  cloth  might  be  stretched  at  once.  A  run- 
ning stream  was  availed  of  for  a  fulling-mill,  a  dyer's 
shop,  and  a  wash-house.  The  building,  which  was 
square,  enclosing  a  paved  court,  was  carefully  and  even 
elegantly  painted,  and  arranged,  without  and  within,  to 
make  it  attractive.  Over  the  principal  gate  was  an 
inscription  denoting  the  purpose  of  the  establishment, 
and  over  the  passage  into  the  court  letters  of  gold  on  a 
black  ground  proclaimed  the  warning,  "  No  alms  will 
be  received  here."  Over  the  doors  of  the  various 
apartments  were  inscribed  their  uses. 

The  building  being  prepared  with  tools,  materials, 
and  utensils  for  work,  Sir  Benjamin  proceeds  to  tell 
us  how  he  got  his  inmates.  New  Year's  Day  had  from 
time  immemorial  been  the  beggars'  holiday  in  Bavaria. 
They  were  out  in  full  force  to  receive  and  to  exact  alms. 
Their  philanthropic  patron  and  reformer  chose  that  day 
for  inaugurating  his  own  establishment.  It  was  the  ist 
of  January,  1790.  We  cannot  but  be  very  forcibly  im- 
pressed by  the  amount  and  kind  of  influence  and 
authority  which  Sir  Benjamin  had  personally  secured 
to  himself,  when  we  reflect  upon  the  resoluteness,  the 
almost  arbitrary  and  autocratical  character  of  his  way  of 
proceeding  in  this  matter,  and  consider,  too,  that  every 
one  concerned,  from  the  Sovereign  down  to  the  beggars 
themselves,  so  far  from  thwarting  him,  appeared  to  fall 
under  his  lead.  Here  was  a  foreign  resident  in  a 


1 82  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

strange  country,  of  a  language  not  his  own,  himself 
not  yet  thirty-seven  years  of  age,  who  had  spent  but 
little  more  than  four  years  of  his  residence  to  such 
purpose  as  to  be  able  to  bring  the  whole  military  and 
civil  powers  of  the  government,  at  his  own  dictation, 
to  grapple  effectively  with  the  most  gigantic  of  the  evils 
of  a  demoralized  community.  No  Eastern  monarch 
ever  had  a  vizier  to  represent  his  delegated  despotism 
for  effecting  results  that  would  compare  in  amount  or 
extent  with  the  beneficence  of  the  measures  which  found 
their  agent  in  the  Elector's  American  counsellor. 

On  the  morning  of  New  Year's  Day,  then,  the  offi- 
cers and  non-commissioned  officers  of  the  three  regi- 
ments of  infantry  in  garrison  were  directed  to  station 
themselves  at  appointed  posts  in  the  streets,  and  to  wait 
for  further  orders.  To  relieve  his  bold  undertaking 
of  the  odium  it  might  have  risked  if  carried  through 
wholly  by  the  military  power,  Thompson  had  at  the 
same  time  assembled  at  his  lodgings  the  field-officers 
and  all  the  chief-magistrates  of  Munich,  and  begged 
them  to  accompany  him  with  their  full  sympathy  and 
aid,  as  he  proceeded  that  morning  to  execute  his  plan 
of  seizing  upon  every  beggar  in  the  town,  that  the 
strong  among  them  might  be  put  to  work,  the  help- 
less provided  for,  and  the  city  be  thoroughly  relieved 
of  its  worst  nuisance.  All  whom  he  thus  appealed  to 
heartily  consented  to  attend  him  and  aid  him.  He 
himself  was  paired  off  with  the  chief-magistrate,  and 
each  field-officer  with  an  inferior  magistrate.  The 
moment  they  had  got  into  the  streets  a  beggar  ex- 
tended his  hand  and  asked  alms.  Thompson,  setting 
an  example  which  he  desired  all  his  companions  to 
imitate,  laid  his  own  hand  gently  upon  the  shoulder 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  183 

of  this  first  vagabond,  and  told  him  that  from  that 
day  begging  would  no  longer  be  permitted  in  the 
streets  of  Munich.  The  mendicant  was  committed  to 
a  sergeant  with  orders  to  take  him  to  the  Town  Hall, 
where  he  was  told  that  he  would  be  provided  for  in  one 
way  if  he  was  really  helpless,  and  in  another  way  if  he 
was  not.  To  his  own  act  Thompson  added  some 
rallying  words  to  his  associates  to  overcome  their  re- 
luctance to  what -might  seem  a  derogatory  proceeding 
to  any  of  them,  and  assured  them  that  there  could  be 
no  disgrace  in  assisting  "  in  so  useful  and  laudable  an 
undertaking."  With  such  alacrity  and  thoroughness 
was  the  work  accomplished,  that  the  magistrates  and 
soldiers  had  seized  upon  every  beggar,  — -  not  a  single 
one  remaining  at  large. 

When  the  motley  mass  of  mendicants  had  been  gath- 
ered in  the  Town  Hall,  their  names  were  taken  down 
on  prepared  lists,  and  they  were  sent  off  for  a  time  to 
their  own  private  haunts,  with  instructions  to  present 
themselves  on  the  next  day  at  the  c<  Military  Work- 
house "  already  provided  in  the  Au.  They  were 
promised  there  comfortable,  warm  rooms,  a  warm  din- 
ner daily,  and  remunerative  work  if  they  would  labor. 
They  were  likewise  assured  that  a  committee  would 
inquire  into  the  condition,  wants,  and  ability  of  each  of 
them,  with  a  view  to  granting  them  permanently  all 
needful  aid.  The  same  measures  were  then  followed 
up  in  the  suburbs  by  patrols  of  soldiers  and  police. 

Thompson  was  greatly  aided  in  his  work  by  the 
circulation  all  over  the  city  of  an  address  and  appeal  to 
the  inhabitants,  prepared  by  his  hearty  coadjutor,  Pro- 
fessor Babo,  a  distinguished  literary  man  in  Munich. 
Many  of  these  circulars  were  carried  by  Thompson 


184  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

himself  to  the  doors  of  the  principal  citizens,  with 
printed  blanks  containing  the  forms  for  an  elaborate 
system  of  regular  voluntary  subscriptions.  The  city 
was  again  districted  for  this  purpose,  and  the  plan  was 
so  thoroughly  contrived  that  pledges  by  name  or  anony- 
mous gifts  acknowledged  in  the  Munich  Gazette,  or 
the  contents  of  alms-boxes,  all  under  the  oversight 
of  the  committees,  seemed  to  engage  the  generosity  of 
all  citizens.  The  reasonable  motive  was  urged,  that 
systematic  benevolence,  besides  being  alone  effective, 
was  also  much  cheaper  than  enforced  and  desultory 
almsgiving. 

Provision  had  to  be  made  for  some  embarrassments 
attendant  upon  the  comprehensiveness  of  this  system. 
Several  public  establishments  in  Munich,  like  the 
schools  for  poor  students,  orders  of  Sisters  of  Charity, 
the  Hospital  for  Lepers,  and  others,  had  been  long  privi- 
leged to  make  periodical  appeals  from  house  to  house. 
To  avoid  collision  and  jealousy,  an  equivalent  to  these 
former  resources  of  such  institutions  was  provided  from 
the  public  treasury.  Then,  too,  the  vested  rights  of 
German  apprentices  to  beg  on  their  travels  —  a  custom 
attended  with  many  abuses  —  had  to  be  restrained  and 
regulated,  as  did  also  the  privilege  granted  to  sufferers 
from  fire  to  go  about  with  a  government  license  asking 
for  aid.  In  fact,  the  oversight  and  removal  of  men- 
dicity required  safeguards  in  every  direction.  When  the 
wretched  objects  of  Thompson's  resolute  measures,  de- 
prived of  their  former  range  and  liberty  of  mendicancy, 
were  thus  gathered  into  a  central  asylum,  he  had  an 
administrative  and  executive  task  to  accomplish  to 
which  only  his  own  v^onderful  powers  and  skill  would 
have  been  equal.  He  was  to  provide  profitable  work  for 


Life  of  Count  Rwnford.  185 

them.  He  was  to  change  all  their  habits  of  life.  He 
was  to  bring  under  rules  of  cleanliness,  thrift,  and 
order  the  most  unpromising  subjects  .of  such  dis- 
cipline. Yet  he  accomplished  all  he  undertook,  and  he 
did  it  with  signal  success.  All  through  his  life  and  in 
all  his  private  and  public  relations  Order  was  with 
him  almost  a  deified  principle.  He  carried  order  into 
everything.  He  exacted  order  of  everybody.  He  did 
make  his  pauper  asylum  a  workhouse  of  remunerative 
industry,  the  inmates  of  which  were  really  happy. 
For  a  series  of  years  the  institution  was  so  successful 
that  besides  producing  all  the  clothing  needed  for  the 
Bavarian  troops  a  large  supply  from  it  was  sold  to  the 
public,  and  even  to  other  countries.  At  one  period 
there  accrued  from  it  to  the  Electorate  a  profit  of  ten 
thousand  florins  in  a  year.  Though  at  first  some  of 
the  inmates  felt  the  constraint  and  restlessness  of  their 
new  condition,  there  never  was  any  mutinous  conduct 
among  them.  Cheap  materials  which  they  could  not 
waste  —  hemp,  flax,  and  wool  —  first  engaged  their  un- 
skilled hands.  A  system  almost  like  mechanism  was 
introduced  into  all  the  details  of  the  establishment. 
True  to  his  leading  aim  of  economy,  Thompson  con- 
structed and  arranged  the  kitchen,  which  daily  pro- 
vided a  warm  and  nutritive  dinner  for  from  a  thou- 
sand to  fifteen  hundred  persons.  So  highly  did  Sir 
Benjamin  pride  himself  on  this  special  accomplish- 
ment of  his,  which  he  brought  to  bear  in  sundry  cu- 
linary feats  in  many  southern  cities  of  the  Continent, 
and  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  that  he  procured 
certificates  from  great  functionaries  testifying  to  the 
incredibly  small  amount  of  fuel  used  in  his  apparatus. 
Four  and  a  half  pennies'  worth  of  fuel  cooked  a  dinner 


1 86  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

for  a  thousand  persons.  Thompson  pledged  himself 
to  prove  that  he  carried  economy  even  further  in  a 
kitchen  which  he  had  made  in  a  hospital  at  Verona. 
Many  out-patients,  as  we  now  call  them,  —  many  poor 
persons  who  received  work  from  the  establishment 
without  being  inmates  of  it,  were  regularly  provided 
with  food  from  it.  As  the  meat-shops  of  the  city  had 
long  been  laid  under  exacting  contributions  by  the 
mendicants,  Thompson  found  their  now  relieved  trades- 
men gladly  ready,  at  his  suggestion,  to  keep  tubs  la- 
belled "  For  the  Poor,"  in  which  they  would  daily  de- 
posit scraps  suitable  for  soups.  The  bakers  also  made 
a  similar  composition  for  their  own  relief. 

Apologizing  for  a  lack  of  orderly  arrangement  in  the 
matter  of  his  Essay,  though  to  general  readers  it  seems 
to  be  wonderfully  methodical,  Thompson  proceeds  to 
describe  in  particulars  the  whole  organization,  routine, 
and  discipline  of  his  establishment.  He  yields  often 
to  an  overflow  of  sentiment,  proving  that  he  mingled 
in  his  martinet-like  stiffness  of  regulation  much  of  very 
tender  and  considerate  feeling.  He  tells  us  how  he 
encouraged  a  spirit  of  industry,  pride,  self-respect,  and 
emulation,  finding  help  even  in  some  trifling  distinc- 
tions in  apparel.  Some  children  who  were  too  young 
to  be  trusted  with  any  material  for  mechanical  work 
were  placed  on  benches  around  the  hall  where  older 
children  were  at  labor,  till,  in  the  irksomeness  of  the 
position,  they  cried  to  be  allowed  to  do  something,  if 
it  were  only  to  turn  a  wheel  by  foot  or  hand.  Some 
trifling  reward  encouraged  them  on  from  step  to  step 
in  their  progress. 

Here,  then,  Thompson  had  in  successful  operation 
two  economical  and  benevolent  institutions.  The  first, 


Life  of  Count  R^tmford.  187 

initiated  in  1789  as  the  Military  Workhouse,  not 
dependent  upon  charity,  but  substantially  self-support- 
ing as  a  manufactory  for  clothing  the  army ;  and  the 
Institution  for  the  Poor,  occupied  in  1790,  and  draw- 
ing its  resources  from  the  benevolent  that  its  profits 
might  accrue  to  the  relief  of  the  poor  and  the  protec- 
tion and  education  of  their  children. 

The  spinning  and  weaving  of  wool,  linen,  and  cot- 
ton were  carried  on  with  great,  systematic,  and  profita- 
ble enterprise  in  the  Military  Workhouse  at  Munich, 
which  furnished  the  clothing  for  fifteen  Bavarian  regi- 
ments. Its  profits  for  six  years  exceeded  a  hundred 
thousand  florins.  The  troops  of  the  Palatinate,  and 
those  of  the  Duchies  of  Juliers  and  Bergen,  were  fur- 
nished from  a  similar  establishment  at  Mannheim.  This 
had  been  in  operation  some  months  before  its  corre- 
sponding institution  had  been  opened  at  Munich,  and, 
being  Thompson's  first  experiment,  he  improved  much 
upon  it  in  the  second.  When  he  came  to  publish  a 
second  edition  of  his  first  Essay,  he  was  compelled  to 
announce  that  his  Military  Workhouse  at  Mannheim 
had  been  set  on  fire  and  totally  destroyed  during  the 
siege  of  that  city  by  the  Austrian  troops. 

None  of  our  numerous  ethical  essays  contain  more 
healthful,  just,  or  fitly  expressed  reflections  upon  the 
exercise  of  the  benevolent  feelings  and  the  pure  happi- 
ness which  comes  from  doing  good  to  others,  than  does 
the  closing  part  of  Thompson's  sketch  of  his  establish- 
ment for  the  poor.  He  was  the  daily  witness  of  its 
benefits,  and  the  daily  recipient  of  the  gratitude  of  its 
inmates,  —  beggars  raised  to  self-respecting  industry, 
abandoned  women  reformed  to  an  enjoyment  of  a  pure 
life,  little  children  shedding  tears  of  joy  to  welcome  their 


1 88  Life  of  Count  Rinnford. 

benefactor.  Thompson  says  that  the  fear  of  being  re- 
proached for  personal  vanity  shall  not  withhold  him 
from  mentioning  some  of  the  marks  of  public  gratitude, 
esteem,  and  consideration  which  he  received.  On  one 
occasion,  when  he  was  dangerously  ill,  the  poor  of 
Munich  went  publicly  in  a  body,  in  procession,  to  the 
cathedral,  and  put  up  public  prayers  for  his  recovery. 
And  again,  when  four  years  afterwards  they  learned 
that  he  was  in  a  similar  condition  at  Naples,  they,  of 
their  own  accord,  set  apart  an  hour  each  evening,  after 
they  had  finished  their  work  in  the  Military  Work- 
house, to  pray  for  him.  On  his  return,  after  an 
absence  of  fifteen  months,  the  subjects  of  his  benevo- 
lence gave  him  a  most  affecting  reception.  He,  in 
response,  provided  for  them  a  fete  in  the  English 
Garden,  where  eighteen  hundred  poor  people  of  all 
ages  enjoyed  themselves,  in  presence  of  above  eighty 
thousand  visitors.  Thompson  asks  his  reader  n,ot  to 
be  impatient  with  him  for  thus  expressing  his  feelings. 
He  says  :  — 

"Let  him  figure  to  himself,  if  he  can,  my  situation,  sick  in 
bed,  worn  out  by  intense  application,  and  dying,  as  everybody 
thought,  a  martyr  in  the  cause  to  which  I  had  devoted  myself;  — 
let  him  imagine,  I  say,  my  feelings,  upon  hearing  the  confused 
noise  of  the  prayers  of  a  multitude  of  people  who  were  passing 
by  in  the  streets,  upon  being  told  that  it  was  the  Poor  of  Mu- 
nich, many  hundreds  in  number,  who  were  going  in  procession 
to  the  church  to  put  up  public  prayers  for  me ;  —  public  prayers 
for  me  !  — for  a  private  person  !  — a  stranger  !  — a  Protestant ! 
—  I  believe  it  is  the  first  instance  of  the  kind  that  ever  hap- 
pened ;  and  I  dare  venture  to  affirm  that  no  proof  could  well  be 
stronger  than  this,  that  the  measures  adopted  for  making  these 
poor  people  happy  were  really  successful.  And  let  it  be  re- 
membered that  this  fact  is  what  I  am  most  anxious  to  make 
appear  in  the  clearest  and  most  satisfactory  manner." 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  189 

It  will  be  understood  that  while  actual  beggars  were 
thus  provided  for  in  the  House  of  Industry,  the  zeal  of 
their  benefactor  took  in  also  all  the  indigent  in  Munich, 
who,  though  they  had  never  begged,  needed  aid,  food, 
and  care.  Measures  were  instituted  which  wisely  and 
effectively  ministered  to  them.  Thompson  expresses 
his  warm  thanks  to  the  clergy  who  had  so  heartily 
co-operated  with  him,  though  a  Protestant,  in  all  his 
measures  of  reform  and  benevolence.  Of  course,  efforts 
were  made  by  him,  and  plans  were  matured,  for  securing 
that  what  he  had  been  doing  for  Munich  should  serve 
as  an  impulse  and  a  guide  for  like  measures  and  institu- 
tions over  the  whole  country.  He  himself  made  many 
excursions  and  journeys  with  these  objects  in  view;  and 
in  all  his  travels,  wherever  his  route  took  him,  he  inter- 
ested himself  in  introducing  social,  economical,  and  me- 
chanical improvements. 

Having  met  with  such  marked  success  in  the  hard  and 
exacting  work  of  practical  reform,  Thompson  felt  him- 
self warranted  in  devoting  his  next  Essay  to  dealing 
with  the  "  Fundamental  Principles  on  which  General 
Establishments  for  the  Relief  of  the  Poor  may  be 
formed  in  all  Countries."  There  is  an  admirable  me- 
dium kept  in  this  Essay  between  the  sentimental  vein, 
which  engages  the  feelings,  and  the  strain  of  experi- 
mental wisdom,  which  would  guide  the  judgment  to 
directly  beneficent  results.  The  suggestions  which  it 
presents,  and  the  methods  and  rules  which  it  proposes, 
might  be  adopted  this  year,  after  all  the  gatherings  of 
experience,  as  promising  a  satisfactory  solution  —  if 
such  is  possible  —  to  the  problem  offered  to  the  civi- 
lized world  in  pauperism. 

The  author  engages  with  that  sad  and  hopeless  kind 


190  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

of  poverty  exhibited  by  those  who  are  positively  in- 
capable of  self-support,  and  which  requires  continuous 
charitable  assistance  and  relief.  The  aid  which  such 
indigent  persons  need  from  others  cannot  be  provided 
by  compulsory  legal  exactions  ;  it  must  be  contributed 
by  benevolent  and  humane  promptings.  This  volun- 
tary provision  will  require  organizations  to  gather  and 
administer  it.  Persons  of  the  highest  social  rank  must 
put  themselves  foremost,  and  must  combine  with  those 
who  belong  to  the  middle  classes,  to  institute  an  elabo- 
rate system  of  oversight  and  relief.  The  objection 
likely  to  arise  from  the  enormous  expense  which  may 
be  supposed  to  be  involved  in  such  a  scheme  must  be 
met  by  the  bold  and  easily  demonstrable  statement,  that 
the  cost  of  such  a  well-devised  system  will  always  be 
much  less  than  that  visited  on  a  community  by  beg- 
gary, with  its  concomitant  of  thieving.  The  system 
will  require  the  districting  of  a  town,  and  the  number- 
ing of  the  houses,  with  a  careful  examination  into  the 
condition  and  circumstances  of  every  indigent  person. 
Thompson  here  plants  himself,  as  he  always  did  in 
every  great  or  little  matter  that  interested  him,  upon 
his  divine  principle  of  Order.  Arrangement,  method, 
provision  for  the  minutest  details,  subordination,  co- 
operation, and  a  careful  system  of  statistics  will  facili- 
tate and  make  effective  any  undertaking,  however 
burdensome  or  comprehensive.  Humanity,  kindness, 
and  wisdom  are  capable  of  dealing  with  the  huge  evils 
of  pauperism.  The  objects  of  this  benevolence  when 
thus  cared  for  must  be  made,  skilfully  and  resolutely, 
to  contribute  as  far  as  possible  to  the  efforts  made  for 
their  own  relief.  They  must  be  set  to  industrious  oc- 
cupations. To  make  the  burdens  of  providing  for 


Life  of  Count  Ritmford.  191 

them  as  tolerable  as  they  may  be,  all  the  best  scientific 
and  mechanical  improvements  must  be  introduced  in 
workshops  and  kitchens,  in  the  selection  and  cooking 
of  food,  and  in  all  the  economy  of  administration.  He 
would  rely  largely  upon  the  donations  and  bequests  of 
the  rich,  and  would  maintain  that  the  endowment  of 
well-ordered  institutions  would  prove  more  effectual 
than  the  forms  of  private  charity. 

As  each  of  Thompson's  benevolent  schemes  involved 
this  great  object  of  economy,  he  was  led  to  find  the 
next  subject  of  his  investigations  in  the  selection  and 
preparation  of  Food,  especially  for  the  poor.  When  he 
came  to  publish  his  Essay  on  that  subject  in  London, 
in  1796,  it  was  a  time  of  general  scarcity,  and  conse- 
quently of  anxiety  and  alarm.  The  House  of  Com- 
mons and  the  Board  of  Agriculture  were  earnestly 
engaged  with  measures  for  relieving  distress  and  avert- 
ing an  apprehended  famine.  He  begins  his  Essay,  as 
usual,  with  the  easy  and  obvious  practical  philosophy 
of  his  subject.  He  refers  us  to  the  principles  and 
method  by  which  animals  and  plants  are  nourished. 
The  newly  discovered  fact  that  water,  instead  of  being 
a  simple  substance,  might  be  decomposed,  is  turned  to 
instruction  on  this  point.  He  enlarges  upon  the  pleas- 
ant maxim  that  the  food  which  is  most  palatable  is 
likely  to  be  also  the  most  nutritious.  He  proves  that 
very  little  solid  food  is  essential  or  healthful,  even  to 
the  most  laborious  persons,  and  shows  how  vegetables, 
skilfully  cooked,  may  be  alike  nutritious  and  palatable. 
He  deals  most  judiciously  with  what  we  may  call  his 
new  vegetable,  the  potato.  He  gives  rules  for  the 
construction  of  public  kitchens,  and  very  methodical 
recipes,  tables,  and  statistics  of  the  most  economical 


1 92  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

and  agreeable  food  for  the  diet  of  soldiers.  The  nutri- 
tive qualities  of  different  kinds  of  food  and  of  vegeta- 
ble soups  are  elaborately  investigated  and  tabulated. 
The  courtly  Count  seems  almost  to  show  himself  to  us 
in  the  apparel  and  with  the  apron  of  an  artist  in  one  of 
his  own  kitchens,  when  he  deals  with  the  matter  of  Ind- 
ian meal,  and  pleads  for  cakes,  dumplings,  bread,  and 
especially  "  Hasty-Pudding,"  to  be  made  from  it. 
Memories  of  his  boyhood's  home  in  Woburn,  of  the 
yellow  maize  of  autumn,  of  husking-parties,  and  of  his 
mother's  substantial  provisions  for  a  youthful  appetite, 
must  have  come  tenderly  over  him  as  he  fondly  argued 
for  this  staple  of  the  white  and  the  red  men  of  America. 
An  exiled  loyalist.  Sir  William  Pepperell,  then  living  in 
London,  was  an  intimate  friend  of  Thompson's,  and 
this  friend  had  an  American  countrywoman  in  his 
kitchen.  The  philosopher,  not  satisfied,  it  would  seem, 
to  trust  wholly  to  her  native  skill,  gave  her  some  direc- 
tions and  oversight  of  his  own  for  preparing  an  cc  Ind- 
ian pudding"  as  a  treat  for  his  "friends.  He  adds 
much  useful  information  about  macaroni,  barley,  and 
rye-bread.  I  have  noticed  in  various  Parliamentary 
documents  and  public  journals  of  the  time  how  highly 
his  advice  and  efforts  were  appreciated  in  that  time  of 
scarcity  and  apprehension. 

Thompson  made  up  another  Essay  by  gathering 
together  sketches  of  four  of  his  subordinate  schemes 
which  he  devised  as  incidental  to  the  larger  ones. 
These  were,  first,  a  military  academy,  in  which  a  thor- 
ough practical  education  should  be  furnished,  not  ex- 
clusively, but  mainly  for  youths  designed  for  soldiers. 
It  was  planned  for  one  hundred  and  eighty  efeves, 
distributed  in  three  classes.  The  first  of  these  was 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  193 

to  be  composed  of  thirty  orphans,  or  children  of  in- 
ferior civil  and  military  officers,  from  eleven  to  thir- 
teen years  of  age,  remaining,  free  of  cost,  for  four 
years.  The  second  class  was  to  include  sixty  sons  of 
the  poorer  nobility,  from  eleven  to  fifteen  years  of 
age,  at  a  small  monthly  charge.  The  third  class  re- 
ceived ninety  pupils,  gratuitously,  as  able  and  prom- 
ising children,  showing  uncommon  abilities,  from  the 
lowest  ranks  of  society.  The  rules  of  admission  and 
discipline  were  rigid,  and  the  administration  was  to  be 
economical. 

The  second  scheme  had  in  view  the  improvement  of 
the  breed  of  horses  and  horned  cattle  in  Bavaria  and 
the  Palatinate.  This  was  in  the  interest  of  his  military 
and  agricultural  reforms.  He  imported  some  fine 
stock  to  be  gratuitously  distributed  over  the  country ; 
but  he  tells  us  that  the  success  of  the  enterprise  did  not 
meet  his  expectations. 

The  third  scheme  aimed  to  resist  an  enormous  abuse, 
by  which  poor  functionaries,  supernumerary  clerks,  and 
others  on  small  pay,  which  from  their  poverty  they 
had  to  anticipate,  were  subjected  by  Jewish  usurers  to 
an  exaction  of  five  per  cent  per  month  as  interest  on 
an  advance.  Thompson  brought  about  an  arrange- 
ment at  the  Military  Pay  Office  by  which  the  advance 
was  made  at  five  per  cent  a  year. 

The  fourth  of  these  incidental  schemes,  which,  as 
subsidiary  to  one  of  his  larger  establishments,  he  was 
obliged  to  advance  only  as  such  subordination  would 
allow,  might  of  itself  have  been  a  leading  enterprise  with 
him.  In  making  his  arrangements  for  a  military  cor- 
don, extending  over  the  country,  as  a  measure  essential 
to  his  plan  for  seizing  upon  all  vagabonds  and  mendi- 
13 


194  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

cants,  he  had  recognized  the  advantage  to  be  gained  by 
giving  permanency  to  some  temporary  provisions  which 
he  had  then  felt  to  be  necessary.  He  formed  and  ma- 
tured a  plan  to  facilitate  a  military  patrol  of  the  whole 
country.  This  required  permanent  stations  for  sol- 
diers, and,  in  order  that  the  soldiers  should  not  be 
idle,  he  proposed  to  keep  them  employed  on  the  repair 
of  roads  and  highways,  and  also  to  provide  for  them 
comfortable  tenements  at  their  stations,  so  that  they 
need  not  levy  contributions  of  food  and  forage  upon 
the  inhabitants.  This  scheme,  as  its  author  devised  it, 
included  the  opening  and  improving  of  military  roads, 
with  distances  carefully  marked  by  milestones,  and  the 
planting  of  trees  on  the  sides.  Very  little  was  done 
towards  carrying  out  this  proposition. 

Leaving  out  of  view  the  philosophical  science  which 
undoubtedly,  like  a  conscious  or  unconscious  subsid- 
iary motive,  excited  and  aided  the  Count  in  all  these 
comprehensive  plans  of  beneficence,  we  must  certainly 
regard  them  in  their  sum  and  effect  as  equalling  the 
results  accomplished  by  any  other  single  benefactor  of 
mankind.  It  is  indeed  hard  to  believe  of  him,  as  not 
only  Cuvier  but  others  have  said,  that  he  really  did  not 
love  his  fellow-men.  Cuvier,  in  recognizing  the  scien- 
tific passion  and  the  social  distinction  which  aided  and 
rewarded  the  benevolent  and  economical  labors  of  Count 
Rumford,  applies  to  him  in  pleasantry  what  Fontenelle 
said  of  Dodard,  —  who,  in  his  rigid  observance  of  the 
fasts  of  the  church,  turned  the  process  into  a  means  of 
scientific  experiment  on  the  effects  of  abstinence  and 
asceticism  on  himself,  —  that  he  was  the  first  man  who 
took  the  same  path  for  getting  into  heaven  and  into 
the  French  Academy. 


Life  cf  Count  Rumford.  195 

Till  within  the  last  two  years  there  has  been  but  one 
monumental  memorial  in  Munich,  which,  by  bearing 
the  name  of  Rumford,  associates  him  in  this  way  with 
the  city  of  which  he  was  so  conspicuous  a  benefactor. 
Even  this  inscribed  memorial  would  not  indicate  to  an 
American  visitor  that  it  was  a  tribute  to  one  of  his  own 
countrymen.  I  refer  to  the  monument  erected  during 
his  life  by  some  of  the  principal  citizens  of  Munich,  in 
the  so-called  "  English  Garden,"  as  an  expression  of 
public  gratitude  to  the  Count  for  his  suggestion  and 
supervision  of  that  admirable  design.  This  work  of  his 
was  undertaken  in  1790.  In  the  northeasterly  environs 
of  Munich  was  a  wild  and  neglected  region  of  forest 
and  valley,  which  had  formerly  been  a  hunting-ground 
of  the  Elector,  but  at  the  time  was  unsightly  and  dreary. 
Sir  Benjamin  conceived  the  project  of  converting  this 
region,  with  the  permission  of  the  Elector,  into  pleas- 
ure-grounds, a  park,  and  fields  for  making  improving 
experiments  in  agriculture.  He  surrounded  it  with  a 
road  or  drive  of  a  circuit  of  six  miles,  on  which,  at 
proper  intervals,  were  erected  cottages  and  farm-houses 
for  laborers  employed  on  the  grounds.  Walks,  prome- 
nades, grottos,  a  race-course,  and  other  attractions, 
diversified  the  extensive  stretch  of  territory.  With 
the  earth  scooped  out  in  preparing  a  small  lake,  he 
built  up  an  elevated  mound.  A  refreshment  saloon, 
handsomely  furnished,  and  a  Chinese  pagoda,  were 
among  the  conveniences  and  adornments;  and  Sir  Ben- 
jamin exercised  all  his  ingenuity  in  perfecting  the 
details  of  his  plan  so  as  to  render  the  Garden  attrac- 
tive as  a  place  of  resort  to  the  higher  classes,  and  a 
place  of  carefully  guarded  amusement  to  the  common 
people. 


196  Life  of  Count  Rumfjrd. 

While  he  was  absent  in  England  in  the  autumn  of 
1795,  and  without  his  knowledge,  the  memorial  tribute 
just  referred  to  was  prepared  and  set  up. 

It  stands  within  the  Garden,  and  is  composed  of 
Bavarian  freestone  and  marble.  It  is  quadrangular, 
its  two  opposite  fronts  being  ornamented  with  basso- 
rilievos  and  bearing  inscriptions.  The  side  fronting 
the  principal  roadway  shows  two  figures,  representing 
the  Genius  of  Plenty  leading  Bavaria  and  strewing  her 
path  with  flowers.  Under  these  is  a  block  of  polished 
marble  with  this  German  inscription,  now  nearly  ob- 
literated :  — 

LUSTWANDLER,    STEH  ! 
DANK    STAERKET    DEN    GENUSS  : 
EIN    SCHOEPFERISCHER    WINK    KARL    THEODOR's 

VOM    MENSCHENFREUND    RUMFORD 
MIT    GEIST    GEFUEHL    UND    LIEB    GEFASST, 

HAT    DIESE    EHEMALS    OEDE    GEGEND 

IN    DAS    WAS    DU    NUN    UM    DICH    SIEHEST 

VEREDELT. 

The  above  may  be  paraphrased  [not  translated]  as 
follows :  — 

"  Pause,  saunterer  !  The  enjoyment  [which  this  place  affords] 
is  heightened  by  gratitude.  A  suggestive  hint  of  Charles  Theo- 
dore, seized  on  with  genius,  taste,  and  love  by  Rumford,  the 
friend  of  mankind,  has  transformed  this  once  waste  spot  into 
what  thou  now  seest  about  thee." 

On  the  opposite  side  of  the  memorial  is  a  bust  of 
Count  Rumford,  in  Bavarian  alabaster,  which,  at  the 
time,  was  thought  to  be  a  good  likeness ;  and  under 
this  another  block  of  polished  marble  bears  the  follow- 
ing inscription  :  — 


g 

2 

3 
a 

o 
_z 

!?  m 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  197 

IHM 
DER    DAS    SCHMAHLICHSTE    OFFENTLICHE    UEBEL, 

DEN    MUSSIGGANG    UND    BETTEL    TILGTE, 
DER    ARMUTH    HULF'    ERWERB    UND    SITTEN, 

DER    VATERLANDSCHEN    JUGEND 
SO    MANCHE    BILDUNGSANSTALT    GAB. 

LUSTWANDLER    GEH, 

UND    SINNE    NACH    IHM    GLEICH    ZU    SEYN 

AN    GEIST    UND    THAT 

UND    UNS 

AN    DANK. 

Which  may  be  rendered  :  — 

To  him  who  rooted  out  the  most  disgraceful  public  evils, — 
Idleness  and  Mendicity  :  who  gave  to  the  Poor,  relief,  occupa- 
tion, and  good  morals,  and  to  the  Youth  of  the  Fatherland  so 
many  schools  of  Instruction.  Go,  Saunterer  !  and  strive  to 
equal  him  in  Spirit  and  Deed,  and  us  in  Gratitude. 

The  Institutions  which  the  Count  had  established, 
and  which,  after  1791,  were  in  full  experimental  trial, 
were  of  a  kind  to  make  him  alike  assiduous  in  their 
management  and  anxious  lest,  from  any  oversight  of 
his  own,  they  should  meet  with  embarrassment  or  fail- 
ure. Of  course,  as  a  very  wise  and  discerning  man,  he 
had  expected  to  meet  opposition,  alike  from  ignorance, 
jealousy,  and  envy.  This  he  now  began  to  encounter. 
He  showed  great  discretion  and  magnanimity  in  dealing 
with  it.  But  care  and  perplexity  from  so  many  exacting 
labors  began  to  wear  upon  his  health.  He  did  not 
spare  himself  either  mental  or  physical  exertion,  but  he 
was  always  thoughtful  about  preserving  his  constitution 
unimpaired,  and  he  applied  rigidly  to  himself  his  rules 
of  dietetics.  He  habitually  abstained  from  wines  and 
spirituous  liquors,  drinking  only  water,  and  was  re- 
garded as  whimsical  about  his  food. 


198  Life  of  Count  Rum  ford. 

The  dangerous  illness  to  which  reference  has  already* 
been  made  in  connection  with  his  own  account  of  the 
manifestation  of  sympathy  in  his  behalf  by  his  bene- 
ficiaries compelled  him  at  length  to  seek  relief  and 
change  of  place.  1  he  Elector  granted  him  leave  to 
travel  for  some  time,  according  to  his  inclination,  upon 
the  Continent.  But  before  leaving  Munich,  doubt- 
ful if  he  might  live  to  return,  the  Count  rendered  in 
to  the  ^lector  an  exact  account  of  the  principal  results 
of  the  four  years  of  his  administration,  compared  with 
the  four  years  preceding  his  entrance  into  office.  He 
left  Munich  in  the  spring  of  1793,  and,  being  absent 
sixteen  months,  returned  there  in  August,  1794,  having 
in  the  interval  suffered  another  serious  illness  at  Naples. 
He  planned  kitchens  for  economy  of  food  and  fuel  in 
Verona  and  many  cities,  superintended  their  construc- 
tion, and  provided  for  gathering  statistics  of  the  saving 
effected.  He  seems  to  have  been  heartily  welcomed, 
and  allowed  full  scope  and  tolerance  for  his  schemes,  by 
the  ecclesiastical  and  other  authorities  having  those 
institutions  in  charge.  It  is  somewhat  noteworthy  to 
mark  how  acquiescingly,  and  even  deferentially,  those 
who  are  generally  so  jealous  of  their  own  prerogatives, 
and  especially  of  the  abuses  to  which  they  are  accus- 
tomed, conformed  themselves  to  the  Count's  experi- 
mental projects.  Throughout  his  published  writings 
are  very  many  references  to  the  sympathy  and  courtesy 
on  which  he  thus  drew,  while  high  officials  gladly  sup- 
plied him  with  their  affidavits  as  to  the  incredible  saving 
effected  in  fuel,  and  the  nutritive  and  palatable  qualities 
of  some  rather  feebly  organized  soups. 

In  November,  1793,  while  stopping  at  Florence,  he 
made  some  of  his    long-continued   and  varied    experi- 


Life  of  Count  Runiford.  199 

ments  on  heat  in  presence  of  Lord  Palmerston,  who 
was  then  in  that  city.  He  was  at  Naples  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  next  year. 

He  returned  to  Munich  in  a  state  of  slow  conva- 
lescence. Being  unable  to  resume  the  management  in 
detail  of  all  the  affairs  of  his  various  Institutions,  as 
well  as  of  his  military  'department,  he  was  obliged  to 
content  himself  with  exercising  a  general  superintend- 
ence. He  was  constantly  watchful  to  conciliate  to 
his  undertakings  all  opponents  who  were  simply  igno- 
rant or  prejudiced.  Hoping,  as  it  proved  with  good 
reason,  that  the  manifest  results  of  his  reformatory 
efforts  wholly  to  suppress  public  mendicity  and  to  make 
the  poor  in  a  measure  self-supporting  by  organized 
industry  would  certify  to  his  unselfishness  and  his 
practical  wisdom,  he  never,  so  far  as  I  can  discover, 
offered  a  plea  on  his  own  behalf,  or  vindicated  his 
motives.  From  first  to  last  the  Elector  advanced  all 
his  schemes,  admiring  his  philosophical  genius  and 
grateful  for  his  administrative  aid.  Spending  the  year 
after  his  return  from  his  travels  in  Munich  in  this 
comparative  quiet,  he  worked  diligently  in  his  study 
upon  those  literary  productions  the  subject-matter  of 
some  of  which  has  been  above  presented.  I  have  al- 
ready spoken  of  his  admirable  style,  his  simple,  direct, 
and  forcible  way  of  expressing  himself.  Without  the 
ornaments  of  rhetoric  his  Essays  have  many  graces,  and 
are  well  freighted  with  important  truths  fittingly  set 
forth.  When,  soon  after  their  publication  and  very 
extensive  circulation,  they  were  remarked  upon  in  the 
ephemeral  journals  of  Great  Britain,  I  have  noticed,  in 
several  instances,  that  they  were  criticised  as  often  pro- 
lix and  abounding  in  repetitions.  Lord  Brougham,  in 


2OO  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

an  article  on  Popular  Science,  in  the  London  Quarterly 
Review  for  April,  1849,  comments  with  sharpness  upon 
the  different  faults  of  some  philosophers  and  some  com- 
mentators in  respectively  failing  to  clear  up  the  ob- 
scurities in  their  subjects,  or  in  over-explaining  and 
tediously  illustrating  easy  texts.  He  commends  Frank- 
lin and  Cobbett  as  admirable*  examples,  in  that,  re- 
membering the  toil  and  difficulty  with  which  they  had 
overcome  the  embarrassments  attending  their  unaided 
investigation  of  abstruse  subjects,  they  had  taken  spe- 
cial pains  to  make  those  subjects  easy  and  plain  to  their 
readers.  At  the  same  time  his  Lordship  thus  finds 
matter  of  ridicule  in  the  Essays  of  Rumford :  — 

"The  scientific  works  of  Count  Rumford  abound  in 
examples  of  the  ludicrous  extent  to  which  sensible  men 
will  sometimes  carry  their  exposition  of  matters  known 
to  everybody.  In  one  of  his  economic  treatises  he 
gives  a  receipt  for  a  pudding,  and  then  a  page  of  de- 
scription how  to  eat  it.  The  concluding  sentence  will 
serve  for  a  specimen :  f  The  pudding  is  to  be  eaten 
with  a  knife  and  fork,  beginning  at  the  circumference 
of  the  slice  [in  a  cavity  of  the  centre  of  which  he  had 
directed  that  a  piece  of  butter  be  left  to  melt]  and 
approaching  regularly  towards  the  centre,  each  piece 
of  pudding  being  taken  up  with  the  fork  and  dipped 
into  the  butter,  or  dipped  into  it  in  part  only,  as  is 
commonly  the  case,  before  it  is  carried  to  the  mouth.' ' 
This  does  indeed  seem  trifling,  as  his  Lordship  asserts ; 
but  the  Count's  whole  minute  description  is  pertinent, 
as  it  really  makes  a  difference  how  the  "  Indian  Pud- 
ding" is  eaten.  The  Count  himself  apologizes  for  his 
details,  alleging  "  the  importance  of  giving  the  most 
minute  and  circumstantial  information  respecting  the 


Life  of  Count  Rumf^rd.  201 

manner  of  performing  any  operation,  however  simple  it 
may  be,  to  which  people  have  not  been  accustomecL" 

This  was  incident  to  the  writer's  purpose,  to  make 
himself  intelligible  and  to  communicate  his  views,  when 
they  were  far  from  being  the  commonplaces  of  knowl- 
edge, to  persons  of  ordinary  capacity.  These  Essays, 
which  have  strangely  dropped  out  of  common  apprecia- 
tion during  the  last  two  generations,  are  to  be  regarded 
as  the  fruits  of  the  author's  period  of  rest  after  ten  years 
of  arduous  and  manifold  labor  in  Bavaria  and  the  Pa- 
latinate. The  first  five  of  them  were  written  out  in 
Munich,  in  the  main  as  they  were  first  published  in 
London,  some  additional  notes  and  tables  being  added 
in  subsequent  editions. 

Rumford  left  Munich  on  his  return  to  London,  after 
an  absence  of  eleven  years,  in  September,  1795.  The 
principal  object  of  his  visit  was,  as  has  been  said,  that 
he  might  publish  his  Essays.  But  he  had  another 
leading  end  in  view.  He  had  many  warm  friends  and 
admirers  as  well  as  scientific  correspondents  in  England, 
with  whom  he  had  kept  up  constant  intercourse,  com- 
municating his  experiments,  as  we  have  seen,  to  the 
Royal  Society, — his  membership  of  which  always  en- 
listed his  pride  and  obligation  of  constant  service. 
Undoubtedly,  too,  could  he  have  had  equal  considera- 
tion in  England,  and-  have  felt  that  he  was  as  highly 
appreciated  there  for  official  dignity,  if  not  with  social 
rank,  he  would  have  preferred  a  residence  in  it.  He 
sought,  in  this  visit,  to  draw  the  attention  of  the  Eng- 
lish nation  to  the  measures  of  public  and  domestic 
economy  which  he  had  conceived  and  realized  in  Ger- 
many. Unfortunately,  on  his  arrival  he  was  the  victim 
of  an  outrage  which,  besides  the  grievous  loss  that  it 


2O2  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

entailed,  seems  to  have  caused  him  some  bitterness  of 
feeling,  from  a  suspicion  which  it  roused  in  him.  He 
thus  refers  to  this  painful  experience.  In  his  account 
of  his  Experiments  on  Gunpowder,  he  had  promised  at 
some  time  to  give  to  the  public  the  results  of  some 
other  experiments  which  he  had  been  making  for  several 
years  upon  the  strength  of  various  bodies.  But  he  was 
obliged  to  add  in  a  note :  — 

"  Since  writing  the  above,  I  have  met  with  a  misfortune 
which  has  put  it  out  of  my  power  to  fulfil  this  promise0  On 
my  return  to  England  from  Germany,  in  October,  1795,  after  an 
absence  of  eleven  years,  I  was  stopped  in  my  post-chaise,  in  St. 
Paul's  Churchyard,  in  London,  at  six  o'clock  in  the  evening,  and 
robbed  of  a  trunk  which  was  behind  my  carriage,  containing 
all  my  private  papers,  and  my  original  notes  and  observations 
on  philosophical  subjects.  By  this  cruel  robbery  I  have  been 
deprived  of  the  fruits  of  the  labours  of  my  whole  life,  and  have 
lost  all  that  I  held  most  valuable.  This  most  severe  blow  has 
left  an  impression  on  my  mind  which  I  feel  that  nothing  will 
ever  be  able  entirely  to  remove.  It  is  the  more  painful  to  me, 
as  it  has  clouded  my  mind  with  suspicions  that  never  can  be 
cleared  up." 

Rumford's  friend,  Colonel  Baldwin,  writing  before  he 
had  knowledge  of  this  misfortune,  says  that  the  Count 
"has  prepared,  for  his  own  amusement,  a  short  sketch 
c  of  the  vicissitudes  of  a  life  checkered  by  a  great 
variety  of  incidents.'  "  *  As  this  sketch,  which  would 
have  had  a  profound  interest,  has  never  appeared,  and 
is  not  now  known  to  be  in  existence,  we  may  infer  that 
it  was  with  the  other  private  papers,  the  loss  of  which 
the  Count  thus  deplores.  We  can  only  conjecture  the 
nature  of  his  suspicions  which  aggravated  that  loss  as 
possibly  referring  to  the  jealousy  of  some  rival,  or  the 

*  Literary  Miscellany,  Vol.  II.  p    33. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  203 

pique  of  some  enemy  ready  to  do  the  Count  a  wrong  in 
his  repute  or  in  his  feelings.  He  refers  to  the  same 
misfortune  again  in  his  Essay  on  the  Management  of 
Fire.  The  register  of  his  experiments  on  this  subject 
was  so  voluminous  that  he  had  left  it  at  Munich,  other- 
wise it  would  have  shared  the  fate  of  his  other  papers. 
To  the  statement  of  this  fact  he  subjoins  the  remark: 
"  I  have  many  reasons  to  think  that  these  papers  are 
still  in  being.  What  an  everlasting  obligation  should 
I  be  under  to  the  person  who  would  cause  them  to  be 
returned  to  me  !  " 

On  his  arrival  in  England,  Lord  Pelham,  his  very 
warm  friend,  then  Secretary  for  Ireland,  gave  Rum- 
ford  a  pressing  invitation  to  visit  that  Island.  The 
Count  willingly  responded,  and  went  there  in  the 
spring  of  1796,  spending  there  two  months.  He  at 
once  employed  himself  in  introducing  into  the  hospitals 
and  workhouses  of  Dublin  many  important  improve- 
ments, and  in  heating  a  church  by  steam.  He  left  there 
a  collection  of  models  for  a  number  of  useful  mechan- 
ical inventions.  His  friend  Pictet,  who  followed  in  his 
track  some  four  years  afterwards,  says  that  these  inter- 
esting objects  were  the  first  to  engage  his  attention  in 
his  visit  to  the  Dublin  Society,  and  he  furnishes  an 
account  of  them  for  the  BibliotKeque  Britannique. 

Very  marked  attentions  and  honors  were  lavished  upon 
Count  Rumford  in  Ireland.  The  Royal  Academy  there, 
and  the  Society  for  the  Encouragement  of  Arts  and 
Manufactures,  elected  him  an  honorary  member.  After 
he  had  left  the  country  he  received  an  address  of 
thanks  from  the  Grand  Jury  of  Dublin,  an  official  letter 
from  the  Lord  Mayor  of  the  city,  and  one  from  the 
Viceroy  of  Ireland.  These  documents,  which  I  have 


204  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

not  been  able  to  recover,  Rumford  showed  to  Pictet, 
who  describes  them  as  rilled  with  the  most  flattering 
expressions  of  esteem  and  gratitude.  On  his  return  to 
London  the  Count  superintended  the  changes  which  he 
had  before  advised  in  the  arrangements  and  kitchen 
economy  of  the  Foundling  Hospital  in  London,  and 
deposited  in  the  Bureau  of  Agriculture  many  ingenious 
models  of  useful  machines.  The  Annual  Register  for 
1798*  thought  of  importance  enough  for  insertion  in 
its  pages  "  An  Account  of  the  Kitchen  fitted  up  at 
the  Foundling  Hospital  under  the  Direction  of  his 
Excellency  Count  Rumford." 

In  connection  with  the  visit  he  was  making  in  Eng- 
land, the  Count  had  sent  for  his  daughter  to  come  from 
America  and  meet  him  there. 

*  Page  397. 


CHAPTER    V. 

Count  Rumford' s  Family  in  America.  —  Correspondence  with 
Baldwin  resumed.  —  He  sends  for  his  Daughter.  — .  Cor- 
respondence of  Sally  Thompson.  —  Friendship  of  President 
Willard  of  Harvard  College.  —  Thompson  s  Provision  for 
his  Mother.  — Sends  over  his  Essays.  — Intention  to  visit 
America.  —  Autobiography  of  his  Daughter.  —  Extracts. 

—  Her  Voyage.  —  Her  Life  in  London.  —  Reception  of 
his  Essays.  —  His  Employments  in  England.  —  Improved 
Fireplaces.  —  Popularity  of  his  Plans.  —  Rumford  Roast- 
ers. —  Endowment  of  Royal  Society  and  American  Acad- 
emy. —  Correspondence  with  Sir  Joseph  Banks.  —  Awards 
of  Rumford  Medal  by  the  Royal  Society.  —  Correspondence 
with  American  Academy.  —  Recognition  by  the  Academy. 

—  The  Rumford  Fund.  —  Action  of  the  Legislature ',  and 
of  the  Supreme  Court  in  Equity  upon  the  Fund,  and  its 
Application.  —  Awards  of  the   Rumford  Medal  by  the 
Academy. 

IT  is  pleasant  to  be  able,  at  this  point,  to  introduce 
an  episode  in  this  narrative  directly  connecting  the 
now  famous  Count  Rumford  with  the  country  of  his 
birth,  where  he  had  "been  known  as  Benjamin  Thomp- 
son, and  with  those  who  survived  here  of  his  kindred 
and  early  friends.  I  have  been  fortunate  in  the  collec- 
tion, from  various  sources,  of  materials  to  illustrate  and 
to  give  even  a  lively  interest  to  this  portion  of  the 
narrative.  The  labors  to  which  Rumford  had  devoted 


2o6  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

himself  in  Germany  had  been  so  engrossing  that  his 
whole  mind  and  thought  must  have  been  concentrated 
upon  them.  It  would  hardly  surprise  us,  therefore,  if 
we  were  left  to  infer  that  he  had  been  comparatively 
uninformed  about  many  important  events  transpiring  in 
his  native  country  at  the  most  critical  periods  of  its 
constitutional  development.  But  he  seems  not  to  have 
been  in  ignorance  of  its  public  affairs  nor  of  its  dis- 
tinguished men  in  politics  or  science.  On  the  other 
hand,  though  reports  of  the  eminence  to  which  he  had 
attained  and  of  the  philosophical  genius  to  which  fie 
had  given  exercise  were,  of  course,  current  in  America, 
it  was  not  till  the  publication  of  his  Essays  that  his 
real  achievements  were  known. 

When  Benjamin  Thompson  sailed  from  this  country, 
he  left  behind  him,  as  we  have  seen,  his  wife  and  infant 
daughter.  The  latter  having  been  born  October  18, 
1774,  was  thus  by  absence  deprived  of  a  father's  care 
at  about  the  same  age  as  that  in  which  he  himself  had 
been  bereft  by  the  death  of  his  own  father.  It  has  been 
affirmed  in  more  than  one  sketch  of  Count  Rumford's 
life,  that  his  family  heard  and  knew  nothing  of  him  till 
the  close  of  the  Revolutionary  War.  Even  if  there  be  no 
positive  evidence  in  refutation  of  this  statement,  —  and  in 
the  want  or  loss  of  writings  covering  that  period  of  time 
I  am  not  able  to  produce  such  evidence,  —  the  assertion 
would  in  itself  seem  a  preposterous  one.  The  public 
services  upon  which  Mr.  Thompson  entered  at  once  on 
his  arrival  in  England  ;  the  constant  intercourse  which 
he  had  with  a  great  many  refugees  from  Boston  and 
Salem  and  other  places,  with  several  of  whom  he  must 
have  had  a  previous  acquaintance  at  home ;  and  his 
own  official  duties  which  required  him  to  be  a  party  to  a 


Life  of  Count  Ruinford.  207 

correspondence  with  military  men  and  royalists  on  this 
side  of  the  water,  —  must  certainly  have  kept  his  rela- 
tives and  old  neighbors  perfectly  informed  about  himself. 
How  far  and  in  what  way  he  may  have  kept  himself  ac- 
quainted, by  exchange  of  messages  or  letters,  with  those 
naturally  most  dear  to  him,  and  with  their  fortunes 
during  the  war,  there  is  now  extant  no  sufficient  means 
for  deciding.  Communications  of  that  kind  were  diffi- 
cult and  embarrassing.  Perhaps  the  severance  of  his 
domestic  and  civil  ties  was  attended  for  a  short  time 
with  soreness  of  feeling  and  apparent  alienation.  The 
embitterment  of  the  strife  as  the  war  advanced, — caused 
by  the  prostration  of  this  country,  —  the  havoc  and  ruin 
which  were  so  wide-spread,  the  contemptuous  spirit  and 
the  ruthless  animosity  which  dictated  the  successive 
hostile  measures  of  Great  Britain,  and  the  employment 
of  foreign  mercenaries  against  us,  made  the  progress  of 
the  conflict  more  and  more  effective  in  destroying  or  in 
impeding  the  expression  of  anything  like  kindly  senti- 
ments between  the  parties. 

I  have  deferred  the  introduction  of  the  following  let- 
ter—  which,  as  its  date  will  show,  was  written  between 
two  and  three  years  before  the  Count  left  Munich  for 
his  visit  to  England  —  because  it  seems  to  be  in  itself  but 
a  fragment  of  a  correspondence  which  was  apparently 
resumed  by  Colonel  Baldwin  shortly  before.  This 
reply,  as  well  as  the  reference  made  in  it  to  the  letter 
that  called  it  forth,  would  lead  us  to  infer  that  it  was 
a  resumption  of  the  friendly  intercourse  between  the 
parties,  which,  beginning  in  childhood,  was  interrupted 
by  the  exile  of  Thompson.  From  some  memoranda  of 
Colonel  Baldwin's  I  infer,  also,  that  his  friend  had 
made  pecuniary  remittances  to  his  mother  and  daughter 


208  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

annually,  through  some  mercantile  acquaintance  in  Bos- 
ton, before  Baldwin  himself  became  the  medium  for  their 
transmission,  as  I  find  by  an  entry  in  his  diary,  dated 
October  7,  1793,  that  he  then  was.  The  letter  from 
Baldwin  which  called  forth  the  ensuing  reply  was  dated 
November  10,  1792,  and,  as  I  have  said,  would  indi- 
cate that  it  was  the  reopening,  on  his  own  .part,  of  the 
suspended  correspondence.  cc  As  to  the  main  business 
of  Mr.  Stacey's  journey,"  to  which  the  Count  refers,  he 
having  been  the  bearer  of  both  the  letters,  the  natural 
inference  which  we  should  draw  would  be,  that  that 
gentleman  was  a  suitor  for  the  hand  of  the  daughter. 
She  had  many  such,  but  I  can  learn  nothing  further  of 
the  matter,  if  Mr.  Stacey  were  one  of  them.  The  reader 
will  be  struck  alike  by  the  earnestness  with  which  the 
Count,  longing  to  revisit  his  native  country,  asks  if  he 
may  safely  do  so,  —  knowing,  as  he  well  did,  how  bitter 
had  been  the  feeling  against  many  returning  refugees,  — 
and  by  the  strong  terms  of  endearment  and  veneration 
with  which  he  speaks  of  his  mother. 

"  MUNICH,  i8th  January,  1793. 

DEAR  SIR, —  I  received  by  the  hands  of  Mr.  Stacey  your 
letter  of  the  loth  November,  for  which  I  beg  you  would  accept 
my  best  thanks.  It  gave  me  very  sincere  pleasure  to  hear  from 
you,  and  to  learn  from  Mr.  Stacey  that  you  were  in  good  health 
when  he  left  America,  and  surrounded  by  all  the  enjoyments  of 
domestic  happiness,  and  distinguished  by  the  Esteem  and  Re- 
spect of  your  fellow-citizens.  Neither  time  nor  distance,  nor 
change  of  habits  and  circumstances,  have  in  the  least  abated 
that  affectionate  regard  which  I  conceived  for  you  at  a  very 
early  period  of  my  life,  and  I  shall  ever  feel  myself  peculiarly 
interested  in  everything  which  relates  to  your  prosperity,  and 
shall  be  much  gratified  by  every  proof  of  your  friendly  recollec- 
tion. I  am  very  much  obliged  to  you  for  your  kind  attentions  to 


Life  of  Coitnt  Rumford.  209 

my  Daughter.  I  hope  she  will  ever  conduct  herself  in  such  a 
manner  as  to  merit  your  esteem,  and  to  justify  the  good  opinion 
you  have  expressed  of  her. 

"As  to  the  main  business  of  Mr.  Stacey's  journey,  I  must 
refer  you  to  my  Daughter,  to  whom  I  have  written  fully  upon 
the  subject.  As  I  have  no  wish  but  for  her  happiness,  I  think 
she  must  be  satisfied  with  the  advice  I  have  given  her,  and  I 
have  no  doubt  but  she  will  receive  it  as  it  is  meant,  and  cheer- 
fully follow  it. 

"  As  to  my  situation  in  this  country,  I  must  refer  you  to  Mr. 
Stacey,  who  can  give  you  the  fullest  information  in  respect  to  it. 
He  will  tell  you  how  sick  I  am  of  the  bustle  of  Public  affairs, 
and  how  earnestly  I  long  and  hope  for  deliverance. 

u  You  could  hardly  conceive  the  heart-felt  satisfaction  it 
would  give  me  to  pay  a  visit  to  my  native  country.  Should  I 
be  kindly  received  ?  Are  the  remains  of  Party  spirit  and  politi- 
cal persecutions  done  away  ?  Would  it  be  necessary  to  ask 
leave  of  the  State  ? 

"  It  is  possible  you  may  see  me  at  Woburn  before  you  are 
aware  of  it.  I  wish  exceedingly  to  be  personally  acquainted  with 
my  Daughter.  I  wish  to  know  her  real  character,  and  how  I 
must  go  to  work  to  lay  a  solid  foundation  for  her  future  happi- 
ness. I  wish  once  more  to  have  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  my 
most  kind  and  affectionate  mother.  I  wish  to  prove  to  her  how 
dear  she  is  to  me,  and  how  grateful  I  am  for  all  her  goodness  to 
me.  My  dear,  beloved  Parent !  What  would  I  give  to  see 
her,  were  it  but  for  one  hour  !  I  should  be  much  obliged  to 
you  for  any  accounts  you  may  from  time  to  time  send  me  of  her 
situation,  and  of  others,  my  friends,  in  your  neighborhood. 
Desiring  to  be  remembered  to  all  those  of  my  old  acquaint- 
ance who  interest  themselves  in  my  welfare,  I  am,  my  dear  Sir, 
with  unfeigned  Regard,  and  much  Esteem, 

u  Yours,  most  affectionately, 

"B.  THOMPSON. 

"  To  COL.  LOAMMI  BALDWIN,  &c.,  &c. 
Woburn,  near  Boston,  N.  America. 
By  Mr.  Stacey." 
14 


2io  Life  of  Couni  Rumford. 

Thus  the  tone  and  language  in  which  Count  Rum- 
ford  is  found  whether  to  continue  or  to  renew  his 
intercourse  with  his  family  and  friends  here,  in  the  first 
of  his  communications  after  the  war  which  has  been 
preserved,  would  not  indicate  even  that  the  intercourse 
had  been  indifferently  or  passionately  suspended ;  for 
they  are  characterized  by  affection,  and  imply  a  full 
knowledge  of  matters  which  might  be  expected  to  in- 
terest him.  He  seems  to  take  up  again  with  the 
strongest  natural  feeling  the  relationships  of  son  and 
father,  as  will  abundantly  appear. 

The  Count's  honored  and  revered  father-in-law,  the 
Rev.  Timothy  Walker,  had,  as  we  have  seen,  received 
from  him,  in  tender  terms,  the  charge  of  wife  and  infant 
when  the  young  parent  hurriedly  and  secretly  went  from 
his  home  to  go  he  hardly  knew  whither  nor  for  how 
long  an  absence.  That  venerable  clergyman,  the  chief 
man  in  patriotism  and  in  common  esteem  in  Concord, 
died,  as  I  have  said,  after  a  ministry  of  fifty-two  years, 
on  September  2,  1782.  His  daughter,  the  wife  of 
Count  Rumford,  lived  to  know  of  her  husband's  great 
fame  and  advancement,  and  died  January  19,  1792, 
aged  fifty-two  years.  Her  abundant  property  and  her 
continuance  in  her  own  comfortable  home  secured  her 
every  worldly  advantage.  Frequent  entries  in  Colonel 
Baldwin's  diary  refer  to  visits  at  his  home  in  Woburn, 
made  for  months  at  a  time,  by  Sally  Thompson,  —  as 
the  daughter  was  familiarly  called,  — and  to  the  payment 
to  her  of  the  proceeds  of  bills  of  exchange  for  con- 
siderable amounts  sent  to  her  by  her  father.  In  the 
diary,  under  date  of  January  29,  1796,  is  the  follow- 
ing :  cc  Friday,  ten  o'clock,  Sally  Thompson,  daughter 
of  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson,  sailed  from  Boston  in 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  211 

the  ....,*  Captain  Oliver,  for  London,  to  see  her  fa- 
ther, who  has  come  from  Munich  to  meet  his  daughter 
in  London."  She  was  then  in  her  twenty-second  year. 
She  took  with  her  the  following  letter  from  Colonel 
Baldwin  :  — 

"  WOBURN,  26th  of  January,  1796. 

"  DEAR  SIR  BENJAMIN,  —  When  I  received  your  much 
esteemed  favor  of  the  i8th  of  January,  1793,  by  the  hand 
of  Mr.  Stacey,  I  expected  ere  this  to  have  seen  you  in  Amer- 
ica, and  participated  in  the  pleasure  which  must  have  arisen  on 
meeting  your  friends  and  recognizing  in  person  your  amiable 
daughter.  I  have  often  anticipated  such  an  event  with  -real 
pleasure,  but  I  find  it  is  like  to  happen  otherwise.  Your 
daughter  informs  me  that  she  has  your  permission  to  visit  you 
in  London,  and  shall  take  passage  in  the  .  .  .  .  ,  Captain  Oliver, 
who  will  sail  in  a  day  or  two.  Her  sudden  departure,  and 
business  of  pressing  importance  which  calls  me  from  home, 
afford  me  time  only  to  say  that  it  is  with  a  mixture  of  pleasure 
and  concern  that  we  part  with  Sally  at  this  time.  So  long  a 
voyage  through  this  northern  region  during  the  sun's  retreat 
must  be  unpleasant.  But  the  object  of  the  journey  is  the  first 
and  greatest  that  can  exist ;  it  certainly  justifies  the  undertaking, 
which  God  grant  may  be  prospered.  The  companions  on 
board  are  strangers,  but  appear  friendly,  and  the  circumstance 
of  there  being  one  passenger  of  her  own  sex  makes  it  much 
more  agreeable.  Mr.  Fraizer  is  very  obliging,  and  gives  up  his 
state-room  for  Sally's  accommodation,  and  has  been  pleased  to 
say  to  me  that  he  will  afford  her  every  assistance  in  his  power 
during  the  voyage,  and  on  their  arrival  will  take  her  to  his  own 
house  until  her  father  provides  otherwise  for  her. 

"  I  know  Sally  will  render  suitable  returns  for  all  favors, 
and  (sickness  excepted)  make  herself  agreeable  to  her  fellow- 
passengers,  as  she  always  conducts  with  the  greatest  propriety, 
and  has  the  esteem  of  all  her  acquaintance.  She  has  been  at- 
tentive to  your  mother,  who  expresses  much  affection  for  Sally, 

*  The  vessel  was  named  the  Charlestown. 


212  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

and  has  assisted  in  her  education  ;  and  your  daughter  has  im- 
proved greatly  on  the  opportunities  she  has  had.  She  possesses 
a  noble  mind,  and  wants  nothing  but  the  aid  of  her  father  to 

make  her  accomplished I  am  sure  .you  will  not  hesitate  at 

bestowing  upon  her  every  blessing  a  parent  can  impart.  Your 
daughter  will  be  the  bearer  of  this,  and  will  sail  to-morrow 
(weather  permitting).  The  season  is  advanced,  but  the  weather 
easy  and  fine.  I  shall  feel  anxious  until  I  hear  of  her  arrival. 
Pray,  write  me  by  the  very  first  opportunity. 

"  In  answer  to  your  inquiry,  I  can  say  that  it  is  my  opinion 
that  you  can  freely  return  to  America,  either  with  or  without 
official  leave  from  the  State,  as  you  may  choose  ;  and  that  you 
would  realize  a  hearty  welcome  from  all  your  old  friends  and 
citizens  in  general.  I  can  say  for  one,  that  there  is  not  a  per- 
son on  earth  that  I  should  rejoice  so  much  to  see Sally 

will  be  able  to  inform  you  particularly  what  your  mother's  situa- 
tion is,  and  that  of  many  other  of  your  friends  ;  but  I  trust  you 
will  yet  return.  Pray,  come  and  see  your  kind  mother.  Make 
us  a  visit,  if  you  do  no  more. 

"I  am,  dear  Sir  Benjamin,  with  much  respect  and  esteem, 
"  Your  most  obedient  servant, 

"LOAMMI    BALDWIN. 

"SiR  BENJAMIN  THOMPSON,  KNT." 

The  Count  returned  the  following  in  reply :  — 

"LONDON,  26th  March,  1796. 

"Mv  DEAR  SIR, —  I  return  you  many  thanks  for  your 
friendly  letters  which  I  received  by  my  Daughter,  and  I  beg 
you  would  accept  my  warmest  acknowledgments  for  all  the 
kindness  you  have  shown  to  my  Daughter  for  the  many  years 
she  has  been  known  to  you. 

"  Her  gratitude  to  you  is  without  bounds,  and  she  says  noth- 
ing on  earth  will  ever  make  her  forget  your  goodness  to  her.  I 
do  not  despair  of  being  able,  at  some  future  period,  to  express  to 
you  in  person,  by  word  of  mouth,  the  sense  I  entertain  of  your 
kindness  to  my  dear  Child.  You  will  not  expect  that  I  should 
attempt  to  describe  the  pleasure  I  felt  at  seeing  my  dear  Girl, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  213 

after  an  absence  of  twenty  years  !  Such  interesting  events  may 
be  conceived,  but  cannot  be  described.  No  language  could 
paint  the  agitation  of  my  mind  upon  seeing  before  me  a  being 
whose  existence  had  always  appeared  to  me  like  the  vision  of  a 
dream. 

"  As  Sally  means  to  write  to  you  herself,  I  shall  leave  it  to 
her  to  inform  you  of  the  courageous  resolution  she  has  taken, 
to  go  with  me  to  Bavaria.  God  grant  she  may  be  happy  there  ! 
She  will  likewise  tell  you  whether  she  likes  me  as  well  as  she 
expected,  and  whether  I  am  kind  to  her.  As  to  myself,  all  I 
can  say  is,  that  I  like  her  very  much  indeed.  She  is  just  what 
I  wished  to  find  her,  —  an  unaffected,  cheerful,  pleasing,  amiable, 
Good  Girl. 

"  We  shall  probably  stay  in  England  about  two  months 
longer,  and  shall  then  set  off  for  Munich,  from  which  place  you 
shall  hear  from  me.  In  the  mean  time,  accept  my  best  wishes 
for  your  health  and  prosperity. 

"  I  am,  Dear  Sir,  with  unfeigned  Regard  and  Esteem, 
"  Yours,  most  affectionately, 

«  RUMFORD. 

"  To  COLONEL  LOAMMI  BALDWIN, 
Woburn,  near  Boston,  Massachusetts." 

This  letter  may  properly  come  in  the  order  of  its 
principal  topic. 

"  WOBURN,  z8th  June,  1796. 

"  MY  DEAR  COUNT,  —  It  has  given  me  inexpressible  satisfac- 
tion, on  reading  your  kind  letter  of  the  26th  of  March  last,  to 
find  that  your  daughter  is  safe  arrived  ;  so  much  natural  affec- 
tion and  love  are  met.  It  must  be  gratifying  in  the  highest 
degree  to  meet  your  dear  and  only  child,  whom  you  had  seen 
but  for  a  moment  in  the  first  stage  of  her  existence  ;  and  al- 
though she  might  have  seen  her  father,  yet  her  organs  were  too 
tender  and  undefined  to  retain  the  least  idea  of  him,  —  more 
than  twenty-one  years  have  passed  since  you  thus  met  before. 
Scenes  tender  like  this  are  not  for  the  pen  to  describe,  they 


214  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

dissolve  the  soul  into  liquid  joy,  and  mingle  a  divine  affinity. 
I  participate  most  feelingly  in  the  joy  of  this  event.  God  grant 
you  both  a  long  and  happy  existence  !  I  know  you  will  con- 
tinue to  be  pleased  with  your  amiable  daughter.  She  is  really  a 
fine  girl.  She  was  beloved  by  everybody  when  she  was  here, 
and  I  only  regret,  and  this  I  do  sincerely,  that  it  was  not  in  my 
power  to  pay  more  attention  to  her  education  and  happiness 
than  I  did.  Her  enterprising  disposition  made  up  for  part  of 
my  neglect,  but  she  is  now  in  the  immediate  care  of  one  who 
will  do  everything  for  her.  She  acknowledges  in  expressions 
of  tenderness  how  affectionately  you  received  and  loved  her. 

"We  are  not  disappointed  in  hearing  that  your  daughter  has 
resolved  to  accompany  you  to  Bavaria.  We  have  only  to  con- 
sider whose  daughter  she  is,  and  everything  good  and  great  are 
the  ideas  that  succeed.  I  long  for  the  period  to  arrive  when 
you  shall  make  a  visit  to  your  native  country.  Thousands  are 
ardently  desirous  of  seeing  you  here. 

"  Mrs.  Baldwin,  although  unknown,  desires  to  be  named  to 
you  in  terms  expressive  of  the  happiness  she  feels  on  the  kind 
reception  you  gave  her  dear  friend,  Miss  Thompson,  whose 
welfare  is  ever  near  her  heart.  Give  our  best  love  to  Sally, 
and  tell  her  that  we  all  think  and  speak  of  her  often,  and  hope 
erelong  to  see  her  again  in  this  countrv. 

"  I  wish  for  an  opportunity  to  acquaint  you  with  the  many 
enterprises  and  various  improvements  going  forward  in  this 
country,  but  time  will  not  permit. 

<c 1  am,  with  much  respect  and  esteem, 

"  My  dear  Count,  your  most  affectionate  friend, 

"LOAMMI   BALDWIN. 

"SiR  BENJAMIN  THOMPSON, 
Count  of  Rumfbrd." 

It  would  seem,  from  the  above,  that  it  had  been 
intended  that  the  daughter  should  merely  make  a  visit 
to  her  father  while  he  was  superintending  the  publica- 
tion of  his  Essays  in  England,  and  that  her  going  to 
reside  with  him  for  a  time  in  Bavaria  was  an  after- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  215 

thought.  She  was  abroad  a  little  more  than  three  years 
and  a  half.*  Mr.  Baldwin  enters  her  re-arrival  in  Bos- 
ton in  his  diary  under  date  of  October  10,  1799,  and 
refers  to  her  return  in  a  letter  to  her  father  of  Novem- 
ber 4,  to  be  copied  in  another  connection. 

The  following  letter  from  Miss  Sally  to  Mrs.  Bald- 
win, announcing  her  arrival  in  England,  must  be  errone- 
ously dated,  according  to  her  statement  of  a  six  weeks' 
passage. 

"LONDON,  March  3,  1796. 

"  DEAR  MRS.  BALDWIN, —  I  improve  the  first  opportunity  to 
acquaint  you  of  my  safe  arrival,  and  kind  reception  by  my  father. 
We  had  a  tedious  passage  of  six  weeks.  I  began  to  fancy  the 
hand  of  Providence  against  me.  But  all  fatigue  and  anxiety  are 
now  at  an  end,  since  my  dear  father  is  well,  and  loves  me.  Till 
I  see  you  I  shall  think  very  often  upon  you  and  the  Colonel, 
whose  kindness  to  me  I  shall  ever  remember  with  gratitude.  I 
have  a  thousand  things  to  say.  I  have  only  time  to  tell  you 
how  sincerely  I  want  to  see  you.  I  often  reflect  with  much 
pleasure  upon  the  happy  days  and  months  I  have  spent  in  your 
family.  Neither  time,  nor  absence,  nor  any  situation  of  life, 
ever  so  exalted,  will  make  me  forget  my  good  friends  in  Amer- 
ica ;  and  be  assured  there  is  none  I  esteem  more  highly 
than  you.  I  will  thank  you  to  give  my  respects  to  the  Colo- 
nel, &c. 

"  I  am  your  affectionate 

"SARAH   THOMPSON. 

"  MRS.  BALDWIN,  Woburn." 

In  1793  or  1794,  Miss  Thompson  was  introduced,  by 
a  daughter  of  the  Revolutionary  patriot,  Robert  Treat 
Paine,  to  the  family  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Joseph  Willard, 
President  of  Harvard  College,  in  Cambridge.  She 
made  a  most  agreeable  impression  on  them,  and  became 
thenceforward  a  most  welcome  guest  on  long  and  fre- 


216  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

A 

quent  visits.  Before  joining  her  father  in  England, 
as  well  as  after  her  arrival,  she  had  informed  him  of  her 
obligations  to  this  excellent  family,  which  doubtless 
prompted  him  to  write  the  following  letter  to  President 
Willard. 

"LONDON,  25th  March,  1796. 

"REVEREND  SIR, —  The  affectionate  manner  in  which  my 
daughter  speaks  of  you,  and  of  your  kindness  to  her,  has  shown 
me  how  good  you  have  been  to  her  ;  and  though  I  have  not  the 
pleasure  of  being  personally  known  to  you,  I  cannot  help  taking 
the  liberty  of  writing  to  you,  to  express  the  obligations  I  feel 
myself  under  to  you  for  your  friendly  attentions  to  my  child. 
Though  I  have  not  the  honor  of  being  personally  acquainted 
with  you,  I  am  no  stranger  to  the  respectable  character  you 
bear ;  and  nothing  could  have  been  more  pleasing  to  me  than  to 
find  that  my  daughter  had  found  means  to  attract  your  notice, 
and  to  merit  your  approbation  and  friendship. 

"  Excuse  the  liberty  I  take  in  troubling  you  with  this  letter, 
and  do  me  the  justice  to  believe  that  it  is  with  much  esteem  and 
regard.  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  Sir,  your  much  obliged  and  most 

obedient  servant, 

"RUMFORD."* 

Here  is  another  letter  from  Miss  Sally,  as,  for  a 
reason  to  be  soon  given,  she  is  daily  in  expectation 
of  leaving  England,  with  her  father,  for  Germany. 

"LONDON,  June  13,  1796. 

"  MY  DEAR  MRS.  BALDWIN,  —  I  cannot  quit  England  with- 
out writing  once  more  to  my  dear  friend,  although  I  have  not 
yet  received  letters  from  you  in  return  to  the  ones  I  wrote  you 
upon  my  first  arrival  here.  I  do  not  believe  you  think  of  me  so 
often  as  I  do  of  you,  for  I  am  sure  there  is  not  a  day,  nor  hardly 
an  hour,  that  I  do  not  think  of  you.  I  hope  by  this  time,  my 
dear  Mrs.  Baldwin,  that  your  canal-hurry  is  3  little  over.  But 

*  Memories  of  Youth  and  Manhood.  By  Sydney  Willard.  Cambridge.  1855. 
Vol.  I.  p.  156. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  217 

I  fear  it  is  not,  for  it  is  such  an  immense  undertaking  that  it  is 
impossible  it  should  be  already  finished.  I  am  very  happy,  I 
should  think  it  very  strange  if  I  was  not.  For  I  have  one  of 
the  best  of  fathers,  that  seems  desirous  to  do  everything  that 
will  contribute  to  my  happiness.  We  shall  set  off  for  Germany 
in  a  few  days,  and  after  I  arrive  there  I  shall  write  you  again,  to 
tell  you  how  I  like,  and  by  that  time  I  hope  to  receive  letters 
from  you  and  Colonel  Baldwin. 

u  We  should  have  been  gone  long  before  this  time  to  Ger- 
many if  some  business  had  not  called  my  father  to  Ireland. 

"  I  enjoy  very  good  health,  and  am  very  happy.  I  should 
think  it  strange  if  I  was  not  to  be.  I  am  indulged  in  every- 
thing I  wish,  and  I  am  under  the  protection  of  a  parent  that  I 
have  not  only  reason  to  love,  but  to  be  proud  of.  On  his  ac- 
count I  receive  every  polite  attention  that  I  could  wish,  and 
had  I  his  merit,  I  should  feel  that  I  deserved  it.  But  this  you 
know,  my  dear  Mrs.  Baldwin,  that  good-nature  is  the  chief  I 
have  to  recommend  me,  and  which,  to  do  myself  justice  does 
not  fail  to  secure  me  friends  wherever  I  go. 

"  Believe  me  to  be  your  affectionate 

"SARAH   THOMPSON. 

"  To  MRS.  MARGERY  BALDWIN." 

It  will  be  noticed  by  the  following  letter  of  the 
Count's  to  Colonel  Baldwin,  mainly  on  business,  that 
the  writer's  kind  intentions  included  his  mother's  other 
children. 

"LONDON,  aoth  July,  1796. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  As  I  am  informed  by  my  Daughter  that 
you  have  hitherto  been  so  good  as  to  assist  me  in  making  my 
little  remittances  to  America,  by  drawing  her  Bills,  &c.,  I  take 
the  liberty  to  request  you  would  give  your  assistance  to  my  dear 
Mother,  in  procuring  and  sending  to  her  the  annual  allowance 
of  thirty  Pounds  sterling,  which  for  several  years  past  I  have 
given  her,  and  which  she  has  received  through  the  hands  of  my 
Daughter.  I  therefore  request  you  would,  upon  the  receipt  of 


218  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

this  letter,  draw  a  set  of  Bills  of  Exchange  In  your  own  name,  on 
the  house  of  Sir  Robert  Herries  &  Co.,  Bankers,  St.  James 
St.,  London,  for  Thirty  Pounds  sterling,  at  thirty  days  sight, 
taking  care  to  date  this  set  of  Bills  the  26th  of  March,  1796 
(my  Birth  Day). 

u  I  also  request  you  would  draw  on  the  said  Sir  Robert 
Herries  &  Co.  (who  are  my  agents  in  London,  and  who  have 
my  directions  to  accept  and  pay  these  Bills)  every  succeeding 
year,  on  the  26th  of  March,  for  the  like  sum  of  Thirty  Pounds 
sterling,  for  the  same  purpose,  and  apply  it  in  the  same  manner* 
that  is  to  say,  that  you  would  pay  it  into  the  hands  of  my 
dear  Mother,  which  I  desire  she  would  receive  as  a  small 
token  of  my  filial  affection,  and  of  my  gratitude  for  all  her 
goodness  to  me. 

"  In  case  of  my  Mother's  death,  it  is  my  request  that 
the  annual  amount  of  this  allowance  may  be  equally  divided 
among  my  Mother's  four  children  by  her  husband,  Mr.  Josiah 
Pierce. 

"  Begging  you  would  excuse  the  liberty  which  I  take  with 
you,  and  assuring  you  of  my  most  sincere  regard  and  esteem,  I 
remain,  with  unalterable  affection, 

"Dear  Sir,  Yours  most  Sincerely, 

"  RUMFORD. 

"  During  my  stay  in  England,  I  have  published  a  volume  of 
Essays,  which  I  have  sent  to  you  under  cover  to  my  friend, 
Doctor  Walter,  of  Boston.  I  wish  they  may  meet  with  your 
approbation.  I  do  nbt  despair  of  seeing  you  in  America  in  the 
course  of  a  year  or  two.  My  Daughter,  who  is  very  well, 
desires  her  best  compliments  to  you  and  to  Mrs.  Baldwin.  She 
is  just  setting  out  with  me  for  Germany.  She  does  not  seem 
disposed  to  leave  me,  and  I  am  delighted  to  have  her  with 
me. 

"  The  HoNble-  COL.  BALDWIN,  Member  of  the  Senate,  &c. 
Woburn,  near  Boston,  Massachusetts." 

I  am  able  to  give  Colonel  Baldwin's  reply. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  219 

"  WOBURN,  December  26,  1796. 

ct  MY  DEAR  COUNT,  —  I  have  received  your  favor  of  the 
20th  of  July  last,  wherein  provision  is  made  for  furnishing 
your  kind  mother  with  a  gratuity  of  .£30  sterling,  a  year. 
I  shall  cheerfully  undertake  to  perform  the  part  which  you  have 
requested  of  me,  in  order  to  effect  your  benevolent  purpose  ; 
and  in  pursuance  thereof  I  have  made  your  honored  mother 
acquainted  with  the  arrangements,  and  agreeably  to  your  instruc- 
tions have  drawn  the  first  set  of  exchange  for  £30  sterling  on 
your  new  agents,  Sir  Robert  Herries  &  Co.,  dated  26th  March, 
1796,  and  have  delivered  the  same  to  Jonathan  Porter  (in  whose 
favor  the  draft  is  made)  in  lieu  thereof,  and  to  replace  the  draft 
your  daughter  made  in  my  favor  for  the  same  on  your  late 
agent,  Richard  Armstrong,  Esq.,  dated  23d  of  October,  1795, 
who  refused  payment  thereof,  as  appears  by  my  letter  of  the 
5th  instant,  with  the  protest  and  papers  accompanying  it. 
However,  I  do  not  mean  that  this  shall  operate  to  the  injury 
of  your  mother. 

"  Please  to  accept  my  sincere  thanks  for  the  volume  of  your 
Essays  which  I  have  received  through  the  hands  of  our  good 
friend,  Doctor  Walter.  I  consider  it  a  work  of  inestimable 
merit.  It  is  very  much  admired  by  all  who  have  had  oppor- 
tunity to  peruse  the  few  copies  which  have  arrived  in  this  coun- 
try. The  author  is  more  frequently  spoken  of  than  ever,  and 
daily  inquiry  is  made,  when  he  will  return  to  or  visit  his  native 
country. 

"  Permit  me  again,  with  the  most  cordial  affection,  to  invite 
your  attention  to  an  object  in  which  the  wishes  of  so  many 
unite.  Mrs.  Baldwin  desires  to  be  remembered  with  particular 
affection  to  your  daughter. 

"With  much  esteem,  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  my  dear  Count, 
"  Your  most  sincere  friend,  and  humble  servant, 

"LOAMMI   BALDWIN. 

"  SIR  BENJAMIN,  Count  of  Rumford." 

"The  above  letter  was  forwarded  by  Dr.  Welsh's  son  of 
Boston,  going  to  Berlin,  in  Prussia." 


22O  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

I  have  already  had  occasion  to  mention  the  late 
James  F.  Baldwin,  of  Boston,  one  of  the  sons  of 
Count  Rumford's  friend,  who,  inheriting  the  scientific 
genius  and  taste  of  his  honored  father,  employed  his 
engineering  skill  in  the  introduction  of  the  Cochituate 
water  into  this  city.  Holding  the  most  intimate  rela- 
tions with  Sarah  Thompson  all  through  her  life,  having 
her  frequently  as  a  guest  in  his  family,  managing  her 
affairs  and  acting  as  her  executor,  I  find  from  the  corre- 
spondence which  passed  between  them,  and  which  I  have 
before  me,  that  he  had  for  her  a  high  regard.  He  was, 
of  course,  aware  of  her  marked  peculiarities  of  charac- 
ter, and  as  a  man  of  excellent  discernment  could  hard- 
ly have  expected  that  she  should  have  been  without 
them,  or  have  viewed  and  treated  them  otherwise  than 
he  did,  considering  what  had  been  her  experiences  and 
fortunes  from  her  infancy  to  old  age.  Towards  the 
close  of  her  life  she  wrote  a  sketch  of  a  considerable 
portion  of  its  most  interesting  period  for  the  wife  of 
Mr.  Baldwin,  also  her  warmly  attached  friend.  I  am 
allowed  to  have,  and  to  use  according  to  my  own  judg- 
ment, this  piece  of  autobiography.  I  may  not,  per- 
haps, use  it  wisely  in  making  such  large  extracts  from 
it  in  the  ensuing  pages.  But  as  there  is  no  one  among 
the  living  who  will  be  troubled  by  its  disclosures,  except, 
it  may  be,  by  some  of  its  incongruities  with  Philosophy, 
I  venture  to  print  much  of  its  contents,  as  illustrating 
one  of  the  ever  varied  and  ever  interesting  exhibitions 
of  human  nature  under  peculiar  circumstances  of  oppor- 
tunity and  experience.  I  may  say  in  explanation  of  its 
style  and  matter,  that  though  there  had  been  an  intention 
and  effort  to  secure  to  Sally  the  best  education  which 
could  then  be  obtained  by  one  situated  as  she  was, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  221 

there  was  something  so  fragmentary  and  desultory  in 
her  school  training  as  to  secure  to  her  from  it  very 
imperfect  results.  She  had  now  for  two  or  three  years 
been  in  correspondence  with  her  father,  and  her  letters 
had  been  of  such  a  character  as  to  have  raised  his  expec- 
tation of  her  accomplishments  higher  than  were  realized 
when  they  met.  It  was  said  that  her  teacher,  Mrs. 
Snow,  helped  her  in  the  composition  of  these  letters. 

The  manuscript  has  a  wrapper  inscribed,  "  The  his- 
tory of  my  life:  begun  at  Paris,  in,  possibly,  1842,  and 
ended  in  May,  1845."  It  is  entitled,  "Memoirs  of  a 
Lady,  written  by  herself."  Indulging  in  the  senti- 
mental vein  common  in  her  girlhood  among  female 
writers  and  correspondents,  she  takes  the  name  of 
"  Serafena,"  and  addresses  herself  to  Mrs.  Baldwin, 
by  whose  request  she  was  induced  to  give  this  account 
of  some  particulars  of  her  life.  Her  experience,  she 
says,  had  led  her  through  so  many  strange  scenes,  with 
rapid  changes,  beginning  when  she  was  four  years  old, 
that  she  might  easily  refer  it  to  supernatural  agency. 
The  absence  of  her  father,  and  her  mother's  illness,  led 
to  her  being  sent  away  from  Concord,  at  the  age  just 
mentioned,  to  the  care  of  an  aunt.  She  was  put  in 
charge  of  a  female  slave,  to  whom  she  was  much  at- 
tached, who  left  her  at  her  relative's,  the  indulgent 
mother  of  "  many  young  children  badly  brought  up  " 
Her  little  companions  engaged  her  in  rude  and  danger- 
ous plays ;  in  one  of  which,  having  been  severely 
burned,  she  was  taken  back  to  her  mother.  On  ac- 
count of  that  mother's  long  invalidism  the  child  was 
left  very  much  to  herself,  and  her  early  education  was 
defective,  the  effects  of  which  she  felt  through  life. 
She  gives  an  account  of  her  grandfather  Walker,  and  of 


222  Life  of  Count  Rum  ford. 

the  peculiarities  of  his  substantial  parsonage,  which  was 
a  garrison  house.  This  leads  her  to  refer  to  those  rem- 
nants of  the  Indian  tribes  which  occasionally  made 
troublesome  visits  to  the  place  in  her  childhood,  though 
they  were  so  wisely  and  kindly  treated  by  the  minister 
and  his  wife  that  some  of  them  once  rescued  him  from 
extreme  peril.  From  his  three  voyages  to  England  on 
business  of  the  town,  the  minister  was  careful  to  bring 
home  attractive  presents  for  the  red  men  and  their 
squaws.  Sarah  yields  to  a  touch  of  romance  in  de- 
scribing her  rides  upon  a  pony,  and  her  lonely  medita- 
tions in  pleasant  woods. 

The  young  lady  had  much  of  her  father's  skill  in 
etching  and  drawing.  Three  of  her  sketches  are  found 
on  the  pages  of  the  manuscript  before  me.  I  have 
caused  them  to  be  copied  as  accurately  as  possible  from 
the  original,  without  any  additional  touches  from  the 
artist.  Indeed,  the  copies  hardly  do  justice  to  the 
spirit  and  vigor  of  the  originals.  On  one  of  her 
visits  to  her  aunt  with  the  "  naughty  children,"  an 
incident  occurred  which  she  describes  as  "  very  danger- 
ous to  our  morals,  getting  us  into  the  way  of  telling 
stories."  They  had  partaken  of  a  surreptitious  repast 
in  the  dairy,  and  happening  to  go  in  to  the  aunt  and 
mother  with  the  tokens  of  it  around  their  mouths, 
were  accosted  thus :  " ( My  little  dears,  I  think  you 
have  been  at  the  cream  ! '  c  No  ! '  exclaimed  one, 
echoed  by  all.  <  But  look  ye  in  the  glass/  said  my 
aunt." 

On  the  next  page  is  Sally's  representation  of  the  scene. 

The  writer,  however,  bears  testimony  to  the  fact 
that  when  her  young  companions  grew  up  they  were 
very  excellent  persons. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford. 


223 


During  her  childhood  her  mother's  invalidism  made 
her  familiar  with  the  sick-chamber,  and  there  is  really 
an  exquisite  delicacy  of  drawing  in  Sally's  delineation  of 
this  scene. 


She  was  sent,  for  two  or  three  seasons,  to  Mrs. 
Snow's  boarding-school  in  Boston,  that  she  might  be 
taught  dancing  and  other  accomplishments,  and  she 
made  many  agreeable  acquaintances  in  the  town.  Her 
mother,  with  recovered  health  and  with  tender  kind- 
ness, during  the  long  winter  evenings  would  read  and 
tell  stories  to  her  and  her  half-brother,  Paul  Rolfe.  It 
would  hardly  be  fair  to  the  daughter  to  suppress  the 


224  Life  of  Coitnt  Rumford. 

following  passages,  though  the  admission  of  tnem  seems 
to  be  at  the  expense  of  the  father. 

"  Peace,  liberty,  independence,  are  proclaimed  throughout 
the  United  States  of  America,  enlivening  the  spirits  and  glad- 
dening to  all  hearts.  Alas  !  those  forsaking  their  country,  de- 
serting its  divine  cause,  are  now  excluded  this  joy  and  blessing." 

"  It  is  true,  we  read  thus  in  the  papers  :  c  His  Majesty, 
George  III.,  King  of  Great  Britain,  has  conferred  on  Colonel 
Benjamin  Thompson  the  order  of  Knighthood,  for  services 
rendered  his  country.' ' 

"  Vain  honors  !  Is  that  a  sufficient  recompense  for  a  separa- 
tion from  friends,  from  all  that  is  dear  on  earth  ?  Ask  these 
favored  ones  who  received  like  honors,  if  they  can  ever  after 
look  into  their  hearts  and  pronounce  themselves  perfectly 
happy  !  " 

Sarah  represents  herself  as  living  under  the  most 
happy  circumstances  of  a  country  life  till  the  death  of 
her  fond  mother  committed  her  to  the  care  of  strangers, 
and  a  severe  sickness  prostrated  her.  Her  memory  was 
at  fault  when  she  represents  her  age  at  fourteen  at  her 
mother's  death;  and  the  winter  ride  on  horseback,  which 
took  her  out  of  her  native  State  to  dwell  with  stran- 
gers, was  doubtless,  for  a  time  at  least,  to  the  friendly 
home  of  the  Baldwins  in  Woburn.  She  describes  her 
voyage  across  the  ocean  with  skill  and  feeling.  She 
not  only  had  the  incidents  of  "  dreadful  winds  followed 
by  calms,"  but  the  disturbance  of  a  love-passage,  —  in 
which,  however,  by  her  own  account,  she  did  not  par- 
ticipate. She  <c  was  enticed  into  the  gambling  game  of 
loo ";  was  exposed  to  the  addresses  of  a  young  cap- 
tain, "  who,  as  the  word  goes,  fell  in  love  with  me,  or, 
probably,  at  sea,  having  few  adventures,  took  a  fancy 
for  a  flirtation,  —  fortunately,  in  no  way  or  shape  re- 
turned." 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  225 

ct  Though  destitute  of  proper  earthly  protection  I  seemed 
favored  by  a  divine  Providence,  in  the  midst  of  temptations 
remaining  unshaken.  Playing  this  horrible  game  of  loo,  and 
always  winning  it,  gave  me  not  the  least  inclination  to  continue 
it.  Thus,  I  say,  with  all  our  troubles,  there  is  a  kind  Provi- 
dence, and  ways  pointed  out  to  us  if  we  will  but  pursue  them." 

She  was  wind-bound  for  three  weeks  off  the  Scilly 
Isles. 

"  My  protectors  were  a  Captain  and  Mrs.  Bennet,  and  a 
Mr.  Frasier  of  London  :  on  arriving,  I  was  to  go  to  his  house, 
where  I  was  to  meet  my  father,  Baron  Thompson.  The 
Bennets  were  of  Boston.  Mrs.  Bennet  and  I  walked  all  around 
the  Island  of  St.  Mary's,  picking  up  pebble-stones  on  the  sea- 
shore ;  but  we  had  to  have  recourse  to  our  old  method  of 
passing  time,  that  of  playing  cards.  The  captain  coming  from 
his  ship,  the  commandant  (so-called)  of  the  place,  besides  an 
officer,  joining  us,  —  the  only  people  we  saw,  as  may  be  said, 
companionable  in  the  place,  —  we  would  be  set  down  daily  at 
some  round  gambling  game.  It  is  said  of  people  beginning  to 
play,  that  they  are  generally  lucky.  Undoubtedly  it  is  the  case, 
tempted  by  his  satanic  Majesty.  For  myself,  I  won  all  the  time; 
winning  at  least  the  cost  of  my  passage  twice  over  of  the  cap- 
tain. But  when  we  got  to  London  my  father  would  not  let 
me  take  any  of  the  money  ;  yet  he  or  I  must  have  paid  it  had  I 
lost." 

The  party  landed  at  Portsmouth,  and  took  post 
chaises  for  London. 

"  Count  Rumford,  my  father,  having  passed  several  preced^ 
ing  years  at  Munich,  in  Bavaria,  had  come  to  England  to  have 
published  some  of  his  Essays.  He  took  the  opportunity  to  send 
for  me,  my  mother  being  dead,  and  I  requiring  protection. 
Many  were  the  scenes  he  had'  passed  through  after  leaving  me 
as  an  infant,  and  erroneous  were  the  ideas  I  had  formed  of  him, 
particularly  of  his  appearance  ;  we  having  had  only  a  small  pro- 
file of  him  in  shade,  giving  ever  an  imperfect  idea  of  the  person. 
15 


226  Life  of  Count  Rumford* 

Indeed,  so  different  from  what  I  had  thought  were  his  looks, 
that  I  could  hardly  fancy  him  the  person  I  sought  after,  would 
willingly  have  run  from  him,  and  ended  in  a  violent  fit  of  cry- 
ing, which  he  did  not  consider  as  a  compliment,  asking  me 
afterwards  what  I  meant  by  it.  To  secure  love  to  my  father 
was  the  playfulness  of  his  character  (at  times),  —  witness  his 
laughter,  quite  from  the  heart,  nothing  made  up  about  it;  the 
expression  of  his  mouth,  ornamented  with  the  most  finished 
pearls,  was  sweetness  itself.  But  to  see  him  accidentally,  he 
did  not  strike  one  as  handsome,  or  very  agreeable,  though  not 
exactly  to  the  contrary.  At  the  time  I  met  him,  having  been 
ill,  he  was  very  thin  and  pale,  —  again  a  reason  of  my  disappoint- 
ment. My  opinion  of 'him  was  naturally  romantic,  perhaps,  as 
young  people's  often  are.  I  had  heard  him  spoken  of  as  an 
officer.  I  had  attached  to  this  an  idea  of  the  warrior,  with  the 
martial  look,  possibly  the  sword,  if  not  the  gun,  by  his  side. 
His  profile  being  in  black,  made  me  suppose  him  dark  in  com- 
plexion, possibly  sunburnt  ;  in  short,  in  stature,  size,  and  looks 
the  perfect  warrior.  Yet  my  mother  often  spoke  of  him  as 
carroty,  his  hair  being  red  ;  but  later  not  so,  a  very  pretty 
color.  My  father  pretended  I  looked  better  than  he  expected 
to  find  me.  It  is  true  he  had  had  a  most  unfavorable  like- 
ness of  me  in  a  small  miniature. 

"  Though  it  was  a  trying  scene  to  meet,  yet  it  was  nothing  to 
finding  out  each  other's  disposition  in  the  end,  and  my  father 
began  with  being  much  alarmed  about  me.  He  himself  resided 
in  a  large  hotel  in  Pall  Mall,  but  could  not  have  me  with  him, 
putting  me  to  board  not  far  off,  at  a  Mrs.  Lackington's.  He 
had  brought  his  valet,  Aichner,  with  him,  and  for  me  a  maid,  by 
the  name  of  Anymeetle,  both  Germans.  I  was  to  be  presented 
to  Lord  and  Lady  Palmerston,  Sir  Charles  Blagden,  Sir  William 
Pepperell  and  family  (Americans),  and  other  of  his  friends. 
My  dress,  it  was  thought,  required  looking  into,  and  I  was  sent 
with  my  maid  for  purchases.  Cloaks  being  fashionable,  mate- 
rials were  bought  for  one.  It  being  to  be  trimmed  with  lace, 
I  returned  to  my  father  with  some  of  the  most  elegant  London 
afforded,  we  having  by  chance  gone  to  a  very  dear,  fashionable 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  227 

shop.  Nothing  could  equal  my  father's  surprise  but  mine  at 
his.  I  had  never  the  care  of  my  own  things,  my  mother  doing 
all  that ;  nor  had  I  the  least  real  knowledge  of  the  value  of 
money.  The  lace  was  bought  because  I  thought  it  was  hand- 
some, and  it  pleased  me.  To  make  matters  worse,  before*  he 
had  got  over  his  surprise  about  the  lace,  I  showed  him  at  least 
half  a  dozen  of  beautiful  new  pairs  of  shoes  I  had  bought, 
besides  several  other  things.  My  father,  without  having  a  par- 
ticle of  avarice  in  his  character  (he  never  laid  up  money,  or 
anything  of  that  sort),  had  order  in  the  extreme,  and  these  pur- 
chases of  mine  looked  much  like  disorder  and  extravagance,  — 
not  the  case,  however,  inexperience  only.  It  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  imagine  the  effect  it  had  on  my  father,  he  viewing  me, 
undoubtedly,  as  lost  forever  if  a  stop  was  not  put  to  it,  if  not 
himself  ruined.*' 

"  This  was  nothing  to  my  having  made  a  courtesy  out  of  place 
to  a  housekeeper.  The  circumstance  was  as  follows,  but.  must 
be  somewhat  explained. 

"  Different  customs,  though  trifling,  excite  interest.  An 
American  miss  of  certain  pretensions,  approaching  or  accosting 
a  superior,  places  the  feet  in  position,  and,  drawing  them  back, 
makes  a  low  courtesy.  The  English  custom  is,  to  draw  one  foot 
carelessly  back,  making  a  courtesy,  not  near  so  low  a  dip  (so 
called),  not  going  back  far  enough  to  lose  hold  of  hands 
mutually  given  for  the  celebrated  shake.  Nor  with  real  fash- 
ionables is  there  any  dip  at  all,  going  bolt  upright,  giving  the 
hand,  sparing  even  the  epithets,  Madam,  Sir,  or  Miss,  and  with 
answers,  to  inquiries  of  health,  of  Yes  or  No.  In  France  the 
young  person  approaches  slowly,  with  apparent  diffidence, 
with  a  slight  motion  of  the  head,  looking  steadfastly  with  a 
smile  at  the  person  they  are  to  meet ;  and  when  the  other  with 
open  arms  comes  forward,  as  when  receiving  a  child  first  run- 
ning alone,  and  much  in  the  same  manner,  bestows  caresses, 
with  the  difference  of  a  degree  more  ceremony  towards  the 
miss  than  the  child  it  being  thought  indecorous  to  express  the 
same  warmth  of  feeling.  The  forehead  of  the  young  lady  is 
destined  to  receive  the  caress.  In  these  trifles  are  to  be  seen 


228  Life  of  Count  Rnmford. 

the  characteristics  of  the  three  nations,  —  the  humility  of  the 
Americans,  the  dignity  of  the  English,  and  the  graceful  good- 
humor  of  the  French. 

"I  could  make  one  of  the  humble  courtesies,  and  was  thought 
to  acquit  myself  well.  My  father  having  taken  me  with  him  in 
going  to  pay  a  visit  to  a  lady,  a  particular  friend  of  his,  not  find- 
ing her  at  home,  inquires  for  the  housekeeper,  having  a  mes- 
sage to  leave.  Whether  it  was  that  I  did  not  rightly  com- 
prehend the  word  housekeeper,  we  having  few  people  of  that  de- 
scription in  the  New  England  States,  —  people  of  first  fortune 
and  family  performing  that  office  for  themselves,  —  or  whether, 
from  inattention,  I  did  not  hear  the  word,  I  cannot  say,  but 
on  entering,  disengaging  my  arm  from  that  of  my  father,  placing 
my  feet  in  position  and  drawing  back  to  allow  myself  a  com- 
fortable sweep,  I  made  one  of  my  very  best,  lowest  courtesies. 
And  this  to  a  housekeeper !  Than  this,  the  affair  of  the  lace, 
most  likely,  was  not  more  cutting  to  my  father's  feelings. 

"  Poor  man  !  he  had  occasion  to  tremble  for  another  circum- 
stance. I,  having  been  promised  to  go  with  htm  to  the  Italian 
Opera,  was,  unfortunately,  to  be  with  a  party  of  high  fashionables. 
After,  I  suppose,  weighing  matters  well,  instead  of  retracting  his 
promise,  he  concludes  to  lecture  me.  Whatever  my  impressions 
of  the  music,  I  was  to  make  no  observations  ;  preferring,  it 
seems,  insipidity  to  an  improper  remark.  This  music  being 
an  acquired  taste,  and  I  having  had  the  advantage  of  only  that 
which  was  most  simple  and  natural,  it  is  true  I  was  not  en- 
chanted. I  much  preferred  —  within  myself,  of  course  —  old 
Black  Prince's  fiddle,  of  Concord  ;  particularly  when  a  rosy  lad, 
leading  to  the  floor  of  the  dance  his  still  more  rosy  partner,  look- 
ing sternly,  said  peremptorily,  '  Make  your  fiddle  speak,  Prince.' 

"In  consequence  of  the  Baron's  taking  a  trip  to  Ireland,  I 
was  put  to  a  boarding-school  at  Barnes's  Terrace,  kept  by  the 
Marquise  of  Chabann.  She,  her  husband  and  family,  were 
French  emigrants.  My  stay  was  much  shorter  there  than  I 
could  have  wished,  I  being  very  happy,  —  three  months  only, — 
my  father  then  returning  from  Ireland  and  making  preparations 
to  go  to  Bavaria,  obliging  me  to  quit.  Madame  de  Chabann 


Life  of  Count  R^tmford.  229 

give  us  a  holiday  for  amusement  before  separating.  Those 
with  whom  I  was  the  most  intimate  wrote  me  letters  not  to 
be  read  before  arriving  at  Munich.  There  were  only  twelve 
young  ladies  taken,  most  of  them  noble.  Miss  Byron  was  my 
particular  favorite  and  friend.  There  were  peculiarities  of 
parentage  in  common  to  us  both,  but  I  was  not  unfortunate 
and  disgraced  like  herself.  She  had  a  father  she  never  saw, 
her  mother  she  saw  seldom,  and  her  grandfather,  the  Duke  of 
Leeds,  who  supported  her,  would  not  see  her.  I  have  since 
heard  of  this  young  lady,  and  learned  she  had  been  properly 
established  in  life,  though  I  never  again  met  her.  Thus,  from 
my  roving  life,  if  I  had  friends  I  was  deprived  of  them.  A 
very  beloved  one  I  had  in  Mrs.  Snow's  school  in  Boston,  Miss 
Porter,  after  our  separation  there  I  never  met  again.  These 
are  only  a  few  of  the  many  I  could  mention.  The  Marquis 
and  Marchioness  of  Chabann  and  family  I  met  again  in  Paris, 
restored  to  their  fortune  and  consequence. 

"  The  fine  appearance  of  English  ladies  on  horseback,  Ger- 
man ladies  riding  differently,  induced  my  father  to  buy  a  couple 
of  English  side-saddles,  designing  one  for  the  Countess  of 
Nogarola,  a  particular  friend  of  his,  the  other  for  me,  in  hopes 
of  putting  the  English  method  of  riding  in  fashion  in  Munich. 
I  was  sent  to  Ashley's  riding-school  to  take  lessons.  I  was 
surprised  at  it,  thinking  myself  all-sufficient  in  the  art,  yet 
I  found  there  was  much  to  be  learnt.  The  mounting,  dis- 
mounting, manner  of  sitting,  holding  the  reins,  the  whip  even, 
walking  the  horse,  putting  him  on  the  gallop,  the  trot.  Yet 
with  all  due  deference  to  Baron  Thompson's  opinion  and  taste 
for  riding,  joined  with  many  others,  I  beg  leave  to  differ,- — not 
approving  of  ladies'  riding.  While  graceful,  it  is  dangerous. 

"  My  father's  friend,  Lady  Palmerston,  observed  to  him  one 
day,  in  my  hearing,  that  I  did  not  appear  to  be  struck  with  their 
fine  edifices  or  architecture  in  general.  This  was  turned  into  a 
joke  by  him,  saying,  it  was  a  characteristic  of  savages  ;  that 
they  did  not  —  or  appeared  not  to  —  take  notice  of  things.  I, 
bridling  up,  told  her  Ladyship  that  I  had  seen  beautiful  paint- 
ings and  drawings  in  America  of  buildings  in  England  and  in 


230  Life  of  Count  Rumfjrd. 

London,  but  I  had  found  nothing  like  them  here,  all  being 
covered  with  smoke,  and  that  was  why  I  admired  nothing.  I 
secretly  applauded  myself  for  having  given  so  sharp  an  answer. 
People  of  any  character  after  a  while  get  conformed  to  circum- 
stances. My  father  observing  one  day,  to  friends  present,  that  I 
was  extremely  docile  and  obedient  to  him,  I  burst  into  a  laugh, 
saying,  he  was  not  to  imagine  it  was  all  free-will  and  pleasure. 
My  father  was  fond  of  having  his  own  way,  even,  as  I  fancied, 
to  despite  me  ;  but,  as  an  excuse  for  him,  he  had  led  the  life  of 
a  bachelor  ever  after  twenty. 

"  It  is  well  known  to  be  a  disadvantage,  in  many  respects,  for 
males  and  females  to  have  little  or  no  control.  His  wish  for 
implicit  obedience  from  me,  and  my  early  indulgence,  as  I  may 
say,  from  a  mother,  made  us  at  times  not  get  on  so  well,  at  all 
events  rendering  me  extremely  unhappy.  My  stay  in  London 
at  this  time  was  not  of  long  duration,  but  from  the  novelty  of 
scenes  and  the  multiplicity  of  ideas  seemed  to  be  so.  Our 
society  being  the  first,  my  advantages  were  great,  and  might 
lead  to  happiness  if  always  to  be  continued  ;  much  the  con- 
trary, if  otherwise.  The  first  society  has  a  charm  which  leaves 
a  void  difficult  to  be  filled  up  when  deprived  of  it. 

"  My  father  was  often  at  the  Royal  Society,  and  intimate 
with  its  President,  Sir  Joseph  Banks.  I  would  be  invited  to  the 
dinners  Sir  Joseph  gave  to  the  select  ones  of  his  royal  learned 
Society.  Through  the  kindness  and  civility  of  Lady  and  Miss 
Banks,  his  wife  and  sister,  I  several  times  found  myself  one  of 
their  party.  Lady  Banks  was  so  kind,  and  most  likely  out  of 
civility  to  my  father  she  would  allow  me  to  be  with  her  for 
days  together,  taking  me  about  with  her,  letting  me  see  things, 
—  in  short,  trying  to  amuse  me.  I  recollect  she  took  me  to  a 
Lord  Mayor's  ball,  where  I  saw  the  princes  and  royal  family  for 
the  first  time.  As  may  be  supposed,  the  select  dinners  of  the 
Royal  Society  were  highly  interesting,  and  where,  I  think, 
ladies  were  seldom  or  never  admitted.  I  was  allowed  to  accom- 
pany Lady  and  Miss  Banks  as  a  mere  nobody  ;  but  this  did  not 
prevent  my  making  observations  which  never  have  been  and 
never  will  be  forgotten.  The  idea  of  very  learned  people 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  231 

suggests  that  of  pedantry.  At  these  dinners  there  was  nothing 
of  the  kind,  differing  only  from  other  refined  societies  when 
remarks  were  made  to  convey  perhaps  new  ideas,  discoveries, 
or  highly  entertaining  instruction,  sometimes  there  being  no 
such  talk  at  all.  In  our  every-day  companies  we  consider  talk- 
ing (incessantly)  of  the  greatest  consequence,  and  lucky  if  all  da 
not  talk  together  and  no  one  is  heard." 

I  must  here  interrupt  the  gossip  in  the  pleasant  nar- 
rative of  the  daughter  to  recognize  the  graver  occupa- 
tions of  her  father.  It  would  seem  that  he  had  fixed  no 
particular  limit  for  his  stay  in  England,  and  that,  as  we 
shall  have  to  notice  soon,  an  emergent  necessity  called 
him  hurriedly  back  to  Bavaria  before  he  had  completed 
the  work  he  had  in  view.  Of  the  Count's  writings,  which 
are  called  by  him  Essays,  there  are,  in  all,  eighteen. 
The  publication  of  these  extended  through  many  years, 
the  last  of  them  having  appeared  in  1812^  But  the 
beginning  of  the  series  properly  dates  its  publication  in 
July,  1796.  The  following  proud  array  of  titular  hon- 
ors appears  attached  to  his  name  on  his  first  title- 
page:— 

"  Benjamin  Count  of  Rumford,  Knight  of  the  Orders 
of  the  White  Eagle  and  St.  Stanislaus  :  Chamberlain, 
Privy  Counsellor  of  State,  and  Lieutenant-General  in 
the  service  of  his  Most  Serene  Highness  the  Elector 
Palatine,  Reigning  Duke  of  Bavaria;  Colonel  of  his 
Regiment  of  Artillery,  and  Commander-in-Chief  of  the 
General  Staff  of  his  Army;  F.  R.  S.  Acad.  R.  Hiber. 
Berol.  Elec.  Boicoe,  Palat.  and  Amer.  Soc."  He  lived 
to  win  and  display  many  more  scientific  and  academic 
honors.  The  third  London  edition  of  his  first  Essays 
was  published  in  1798.  An  American  edition  appeared 
in  Boston,  in  three  volumes,  in  1798.  and  1799. 


232  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Count  himself  sent  several  copies  to  his  friends  in  this 
country.  A  fifth  edition  of  three  volumes  appeared  in 
London  in  1800.  In  1802  a  fourth  volume  was  added, 
containing  many  of  Rumford's  Philosophical  Papers, 
and  this  was  issued  again  the  next  year.  His  Essays 
on  the  Treatment  of  Pauperism  were  published  sepa- 
rately in  London  in  1851,  and  again  in  1855.  His 
works  were  at  once  translated  into  German  and  French. 
During  this  period  of  his  stay  in  England,  making 
excursions  to  Ireland  and  Scotland,  as  we  learn  from  his 
daughter's  narrative,  the  Count  was  in  the  full  enjoy- 
ment of  his  social  and  scientific  distinction.  Un- 
doubtedly this  was  to  himself  the  most  satisfactory 
period  of  his  life.  His  fame  was  now  established  on 
claims  and  services  which  partook  equally  of  scientific 
and  philanthropic  contributions  to  the  welfare  of  hu- 
manity. Farther  on  in  his  career  we  shall  find  that  an 
element  of  embitterment  and  antagonism  entered  into 
his  experience  and  his  relations  with  some  of  his  con- 
temporaries and  scientific  associates,  and  led  him  to  nar- 
row the  range  of  his  intercourse,  even  to  a  degree  of 
isolation  and  self-seclusion.  But  while  in  England  on 
this  visit,  and  on  the  even  more  important  one  which  he 
made  two  years  afterwards,  he  seems  to  have  found  an 
unqualified  pleasure  in  his  work  in -the  appreciation  of 
it  by  the  public,  and  in  the  respect  and  attentions  ex- 
hibited towards  him  by  very  many  persons  of  the  highest 
social  rank.  He  certainly  was  fond  of  such  attentions. 
He  was  deferential  to  rank  and  station,  and  craved  inter- 
course on  confidential  terms  with  many  of  the  nobility, 
no  doubt  persuaded  that  his  talents  and  the  uses  for 
which  he  employed  them  made  him  a  peer  of  those 
wnom  birth,  fortune,  or  circumstances  had  lifted  in  the 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  233 

social  scale.  Franklin  —  to  outward  seeming,  at  least  — 
wns  more  indifferent  than  was  Rumford  to  the  prestige 
and  assumptions  of  the  aristocracy.  Yet  we  should  give 
to  the  latter  the  benefit  of  judging  him  by  a  principle  of 
his  own,  which,  in  his  following  of  it,  may  have  fur- 
nished him  with  a  disinterested  motive.  That  prince 
pie  was  that  all  reforms  and  improvements  must  be 
directed  with  an  aim  to  relieve  and  help  the  common 
people,  and  that  a  prime  condition  for  a  successful 
application  of  them  was  to  engage  for  them  the  sym- 
pathetic interest  of  the  privileged,  the  nobility,  and  the 
wealthy. 

Incident  to  his  very  laborious  and  ardent  efforts  for 
cheapening  the  production  and  preparation  of  nutritive 
food,  and  indeed  as  the  essential  condition  for  success 
in  those  efforts,  the  Count  devoted  himself  most  zeal- 
ously to  the  study  and  the  mechanical  improvement  of 
all  the  apparatus  connected  with  fireplaces  and  chimney- 
flues.  When  he  first  published  his  Essay  on  "  Chim- 
ney Fire-places,  with  Proposals  for  improving  them  to 
save  Fuel;  to  render  Dwelling-houses  more  Comforta- 
ble and  Salubrious,  and  effectually  to  prevent  Chimneys 
from  Smoking,"  the  Count  was  able  to  say  that  he 
"  had  not  had  less  than  five  hundred  smoking  chimneys 
under  his  hands."  Of  course  the  announcement  was 
an  advertisement  of  himself  as  an  expert  in  a  rather 
uninviting  occupation.  But  he  was  so  zealous  and 
unwearied  a  worker  in  such  economical  reforms  that 
he  never  refused  to  give  his  services,  whether  in  palace, 
poor  house,  or  farmer's  cottage.  His  first  experiment 
in  London  was  tried  in  Lord  Palmerston's  house,  in 
Hanover  Square.  Then  he  took  in  hand  the  chimneys 
of  the  house  where  the  Board  of  Agriculture  held  its 


234  Life  of  Count  Riunford. 

meetings,  and  which,  being  frequented  by  people  from 
all  parts  of  Great  Britain,  he  hoped  would  be  another 
advertisement  of  his  improvement.  He  did  the  same 
for  the  chimneys  of  Devonshire  House,  and  for  the 
dwellings  of  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  the  Earl  of  Besborough, 
the  Countess-Dowager  Spencer,  Melbourne  House, 
Lady  Templeton's,  Mrs.  Montague's,  Lord  Sudley's, 
the  Marquis  of  Salisbury's,  and  a  hundred  and  fifty 
others  in  London.  He  instructed  a  firm  of  bricklayers 
in  his  method  so  as  to  give  them  constant  employment. 
He  found  that  the  saving  of  fuel  which  he  effected, 
while  gaining  increased  warmth,  amounted  to,  from  one 
half  to  two  thirds.  He  made  use  of  his  own  room  in 
the  Royal  Hotel,  Pall  Mall,  for  trying  experiments  in 
the  construction  of  fireplaces  and  chimney-flues  ;  and  he 
enlisted  the  co-operation  of  Mrs.  Hempel,  the  owner 
of  a  large  pottery  in  Chelsea,  for  manufacturing  the 
parts  of  new  materials  in  her  line,  and  of  Mr.  Hopkins, 
the  King's  ironmonger,  for  materials  in  his  line,  to  aid 
in  carrying  out  his  own  designs.  Giving  very  simple 
and  intelligible  information  about  the  philosophical 
principles  of  combustion,  ventilation,  and  draughts,  he 
prepared  careful  diagrams  to  show  the  proper  measure- 
ments, disposal,  and  arrangements  of  all  the  parts  of  a 
fireplace  and  a  flue,  at  the  same  time  announcing  that 
he  had  no  purpose  to  take  out  a  patent  for  any  of  his 
inventions  or  improvements,  but  left  them  wholly  free 
to  the  public.  The  cure  of  smoking  chimneys  and  the 
economy  of  heat  were  found  to  depend  upon  much  the 
same  improvements  applied  to  the  construction  of  fire- 
places. He  noticed  that,  in  most  of  those  which  he 
examined,  the  heat  which  was  radiated  so  as  to  warm  an 
apartment  was  scarcely  a  fifth  part  of  what  was  gen- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  235 

crated  by  the  fuel,  all  the  rest  passing  off  by  the  chim- 
ney. He  fixed  upon  an  angle  of  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
five  degrees  as  the  one  that  ought  to  be  formed  between 
the  sides  of  the  fireplace  and  the  back  of  it,  and  decided 
that  the  back  should  be  one  third  of  the  breadth  of  the 
front  opening,  and  be  carried  up  perpendicularly  till  it 
joins  the  breast,  and  leave  the  throat  of  the  chimney 
about  four  inches  wide.  The  historian  of  the  Royal 
Society,  its  assistant  secretary  and  librarian,  writing  in 
1848,  says  in  a  note:*  "One  of  the  earliest  of  Rum- 
ford's  stoves,  or  fireplaces,  is  that  set  up  under  the 
Count's  immediate  superintendence  in  my  office  in 
the  Royal  Society.  It  is  by  far  the  best  fireplace  which 
I  have  seen."  The  Count  did  not  neglect  the  interests 
and  comfort  of  the  sooty  chimney-sweepers,  so  impor- 
tant a  class  in  the  London  of  those  days. 

In  a  poem  entitled  "The  Pursuits  of  Literature," 
by  Thomas  James  Mathias,  (erroneously  ascribed  in 
Watt's  Bibliotheca  Britannica  to  William  Gifford)  the 
first  part  of  which  was  published  in  May,  1794,  and 
which,  in  spite  of  its  prosiness  and  its  dull  satire,  was  so 
popular  as  to  have  reached  the  seventh  edition  of  all  its 
four  parts  in  London  in  1798,  and  to  have  been  re- 
printed in  Philadelphia  two  years  afterwards,  occurs  the 
following  tribute  to  Rumford,  perhaps  the  best  thing 
in  the  whole  work  :  — 

"  Yet  all  shall  read,  and  all  that  page  approve, 
When  public  spirit  meets  with  public  love. 
Thus  late,  where  poverty  with  rapine  dwelt, 
Rumford's  kind  genius  the  Bavarian  felt, 
Not  by  romantic  charities  beguiled, 
But  calm  in  project,  and  in  mercy  mild; 
Where'er  his  wisdom  guided,  none  withstood, 
Content  with  peace  and  practicable  good; 

*  Weld's  History,  &c.     Vol.  II.  p.  213. 


236  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Round  him  the  laborers  throng,  the  nobles  wait, 
Friend  of  the  poor  and  guardian  of  the  State." 

The  poet,  referring  in  a  note  to  the  then  recently 
published  Essays,  says  :  "  I  hope  the  directors  of  the 
interior  government  of  this  country  will  have  the  sense 
and  wisdom  to  profit  from  this  most  valuable  and  im- 
portant work,  whose  truly  philosophic  and  benevolent 
author  must  feel  a  joy  and  self-satisfaction  far  superior 
to  any  praise  which  man  can  bestow."  In  another  note, 
on  the  word  "  mercy  "  in  his  text,  the  poet  says  that 
grace  is  "a  distinguishing  feature  in  all  the  Count's 
plans  for  the  relief  of  the  poor,  the  idle,  the  abandoned, 
and  the  wretched.  The  mode  of  conferring  mercy  and 
apparent  kindness  is  not  always  mild  and  merciful." 
The  poet's  high  encomiums  on  Count  Rumford  are 
the  more  observable,  as  in  his  numerous  and  elaborate 
notes,  covering  more  than  half  his  pages,  he  delights 
to  launch  his  satires  against  the  Royal  Society  and  its 
members,  especially  the  Count's  intimate  friend,  Sir 
Charles  Blagden.  In  another  of  his  Poems,  'cThe 
Shade  of  Alexander  Pope,"  Mathias,  in  a  complimen- 
tary allusion,  makes  a  reference  to  the  figure  of  the 
Count  which  indicates  the  effect  of  labor  and  illness 
on  his  health  and  former  robustness. 

"  Through  air,  fire,  earth,  how  unconfined  we  range ! 
What  veil  has  Nature  ?  and  what  works  are  strange  ? 
All  mark  each  varied  mode  of  heat  and  light, 
From  the  spare  Rumford  to  the  pallid  Knight."  f 

As  the  Count  returned  to  London  from  his  frequent 
long  or  short  journeys,  taken  in  behalf  of  his  friends  or 
for  the  introduction  and  supervision  of  his  own  con- 
trivances, his  attention  was  always  curiously  and  anx- 
iously engaged  by  the  clouds  of  smoke  which  hung  over 

*  Pursuits  of  Literature,  Philadelphia  Ed.,  p.  192.  f   Ib.  p.  34. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  237 

the  metropolis,  and  which  covered  all  its  prominent 
edifices  with  a  dingy  and  sooty  mantle.  He  saw  in 
that  smoke  the  unused  material  which  was  turned 
equally  to  waste  and  a  means  of  annoyance  and  in- 
salubrity. He  said,  playfully,  yet  in  the  sincerity  of  a 
true  economical  philosophy,  that  he  would  bind  himself, 
if  the  opportunity  were  allowed  him,  to  prove  to  the 
citizens,  that  from  the  heat  and  the  material  of  heat 
which  were  thus  wasted  he  would  agree  to  cook  all 
the  food  used  in  the  city,  warm  every  apartment,  and 
perform  all  the  mechanical  work  done  by  means  of  fire. 
There  have  been  many  wise  and  skilful  experiments 
since  his  day,  and  many  scientific  papers  have  been  pre- 
pared on  the  loss  and  the  nuisance  represented  by  that 
same  smoky  atmosphere  of  London.  But  probably  no 
one  has  intermeddled  with  it  more  effectually  than  did 
he  who  first  turned  full  attention  to  the  philosophy  of 
light  and  heat. 

"The  Rumford  Roasters,"  so  called,  came  into 
extensive  use  in  Great  Britain,  and  were  imported  into 
this  country,  very  many  of  them  being  set  up  in  Bos- 
ton and  the  neighboring  towns  in  the  best  houses. 
The  Roaster,  if  not  the  first,  was  the  most  scientific, 
ingenious,  and  effective  apparatus  of  the  kind  which,  by 
its  arrangement  of  flues  for  conveying  hot  air  around 
the  food  in  the  oven,  as  well  as  by  economizing  fuel, 
allowed  of  the  preparation  of  many  articles  by  one  fire, 
and  greatly  facilitated  the  labors  and  added  to  the  com- 
fort of  the  cook.  The  families  which  practised  a  gen- 
erous hospitality  found  it  to  be  a  most  welcome  addition 
to  their  culinary  arrangements.  There  was  at  one  time, 
so  to  speak,  an  enthusiasm  and  an  epidemic  excitement 
about  it.  Count  Rumford's  Essays  on  Food  and  its 


238  Life  of  Coimt  Rumford. 

Preparation,  and  on  Fuel,  were  widely  circulated  here, 
both  in  copies  of  the  English  edition,  which  he  sent  to 
his  many  friends,  and  in  the  Boston  reprint.  The  sim- 
plicity, homeliness,  and  experimental  good  sense  of  the 
subject-matter  of  their  text,  and  the  admirable  diagrams 
and  the  plates  which  illustrated  them,  made  them  in- 
telligible to  all  readers,  and  prompted  a  general  desire 
to  put  his  improvements  under  practical  trial.  They 
were  especially  popular  in  Salem,  where  many  of  the 
flourishing  citizens  had  occasion  to  recall  over  their 
dinners  the  apprentice-boy  in  Mr.  Appleton's  store. 
The  distinguished  minister  of  the  First  Church  in  that 
town,  Dr.  Prince,  the  successor  to  young  Thompson's 
friend  Barnard,  himself  a  most  successful  cultivator  of 
experimental  science,  is  said  to  have  set  up  the*  first 
Rumford  Roaster  in  his  own  house,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  century;  it  remained  in  constant  use  there  till 
within  ten  years,  when  the  house  was  sold. 

A  curious  anecdote  is  told  in  connection  with  the 
"  Roaster,"  in  a  charming  biography  of  one  of  the  emi- 
nent men  of  Massachusetts  of  the  last  age,  —  that  of 
Chief-Justice  Theophilus  Parsons,  by  his  son,  the  Law 
Professor  of  the  same  name.  The  biographer  says  that 
his  father  had  imported,  in  or  about  1807,  a  complete  set 
of  the  apparatus,  and  having  had  it  placed  in  his  upper 
kitchen,  was  very  proud  of  it.  He  found  that  from  its 
novelty  and  the  ignorance  of  his  cook  it  required  for  a 
time  his  own  oversight,  when  at  last,  by  his  patient  in- 
struction of  his  servant,  everything  went  well.  On  the 
strength  of  the  new  cooking  apparatus  he  had  invited  a 
large  dinner-party,  and  the  Roaster  proved  equal  to  the 
occasion.  Judge  and  Mrs.  Sever,  of  Kingston,  excel- 
lent people  of  the  old  school,  were  among  his  guests, 


Lifi  of  Count  Rumford.  239 

—  she  being  stiff  and  precise  in  formality  and  brocade. 
The  water  through  the  aqueduct  from  Jamaica  Plain, 
another  improvement,  had  also  been  recently  introduced 
into  the  Chief-Justice's  house,  and  on  the  day  of  the 
dinner-party,  owing  to  some  derangement,  had  required 
his  attention.  He  had  come  from  court  with  his  mind 
engaged  by  an  interesting  insurance  case,  which  he  had 
been  trying,  about  a  schooner.  The  Chief-Justice  had 
a  marked  peculiarity  of  memory.  His  hold  on  mere 
names  seemed  to  be  as  weak  as  his  grasp  of  everything 
else  was  strong,  and  sometimes,  in  moments  of  abstrac- 
tion, he  would  make  strange  mistakes.  On  this  oc- 
casion, the  company  being  seated,  after  grace  was  said, 
as  he  took  the  carving-knife  in  hand,  he  addressed  the 
stately  Mrs.  Sever  across  the  length  of  the  table,  with 
this  remarkable  announcement,  "  Mrs.  Schooner,  all 
the  food  on  this  table  was  cooked  in  the  aqueduct." 
His  wife,  dropping  from  her  hand  the  fish-knife,  cried 
out  in  consternation,  "  Lord's  sake,  Mr.  Parsons,  what 
do  you  mean  ?  " 

In  casting  my  eyes  over  the  last  importation  of  a 
batch  of  books  from  London,  for  one  of  our  public 
libraries,  after  writing  the  preceding  pages,  I  was  struck 
with  an  inscription  on  the  cover  of  one  of  them  as 
follows :  "  Fuel  in  Cooking."  On  opening  to  the 
title-page,  I  read,  cc  On  the  Extravagant  Use  of  Fuel 
in  Cooking  Operations,  together  with  a  short  account 
of  Benjamin,  Count  of  Rumford,  and  his  economical 
systems,  and  numerous  practical  suggestions  adapted 
for  domestic  use.  By  Frederick  Edwards,  Jr.  Lon- 
don :  Longman,  Green,  &  Co.,  1869."  It  is  the  third 

*  Memoirs  of  Theophilus  Parsons,  Chief-Justice  of  the  Supreme  Judicial  Court  of 
Massachusetts,  &c.,  pp.  261,  262. 


240  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

publication  of  the  author  on  the  same  subject.  He 
recognizes  the  valuable  services  rendered  by  Count 
Rumford  at  the  beginning  of  this  century,  the  im- 
portant improvements  which  he  introduced,  and  the 
enthusiasm  and  gratitude  which  he  called  forth  so 
widely  over  the  kingdom  in  great  houses  and  in  hum- 
ble homes.  He  regrets  that  indifference,  carelessness, 
and  wastefulness,  have  allowed  his  valuable,  salutary 
and  economical  inventions  and  arrangements  to  fall 
into  disuse  and  oblivion,  and  zealously  pleads  for  their 
revival.  The  book  is  illustrated  by  plates  and  "direc- 
tions which  would  almost  lead  one  who  was  resting  for 
an  hour  from  recording  the  life  of  Count  Rumford  to 
imagine  that  his  fading  memory  Was  being  revived  by 
one  who  shared  his  interest  in  culinary  economy.  I 
also  see,  almost  daily,  passing  through  our  streets,  an 
express  wagon  which  bears  the  inscription,  "  Rumford 
Food  Laboratory."  It  is  in  the  service  of  an  estab- 
lishment in  the  main  thoroughfare  of  this  city,  which 
announces  in  its  advertisements  that  it  will  furnish 
cooked  provisions  daily,  nutritive,  hot,  and  cheap,  to 
lonely  lodgers,  or  to  families  without  cook  or  kitchen. 
During  this  transient  residence  of  less  than  one  year 
in  England,  busily  occupied  as  he  was  in  a  variety  of 
interesting  and  important  occupations,  scientific  and 
economical,  Count  Rumford,  by  what  was  for  the  time 
a  most  munificent  endowment,  provided  in  both  hemi- 
spheres for  the  incidental  connection  of  his  own  name, 
perpetually,  with  the  progressive  pursuit  of  his  own 
favorite  study  in  the  philosophy  of  light  and  heat. 
If  we  look  to  the  lines  of  the  sightless  Milton  for  the 
most  exquisite  and  touching  utterances  of  poetry  on 
the  "  co-eternal  "  element  of  light,  we  must  assign  to 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  241 

Rumford  an  unrivalled  honor  for  his  prose  treatment 
of  the  created  element.  There  is  almost  a  soaring  into 
the  realm  of  poetry  in  his  references  to  it.  He  re- 
garded it  as  one  of  the  subjects  most  engaging  for 
human  thought,  and  in  connection  with  the  study  of 
optics,  and  in  applications  to  artificial  inventions  for 
the  household,  as  well  as  for  advancing  astronomical  sci- 
ence, as  promising  steady  revelations  to  reward  the 
search  of  the  philosopher.  There  was  something  al- 
most of  an  over-trustful  confidence  in  his  belief,  as- 
sured to  us  by  the  terms  of  his  endowments,  that  some 
discovery  or  improvement  would  be  made  in  the  sub- 
jects of  Light  and  Heat  as  often  as  once  in  each  period 
of  two  years  for  an  indefinite  future,  and  that,  too,  on 
either  hemisphere  of  the  earth,  of  a  nature  to  justify 
the  award  of  a  valuable  gold  medal  to  a  long  series  of 
prospective  benefactors  of  mankind.  Of  course  his 
object  was  to  engage  special  study,  and  to  turn  investi- 
gation and  experiment  towards  those  subjects.  The 
medal  was  to  be  an  honorary  recognition,  not  a  pecu- 
niary reward  of  success  in  those  branches  of  science. 
Yet  while  Rumford  did  not  forbid  that  a  mere  theorizer 
upon  them  should  be  a  candidate  for  his  prize,  he  had 
in  view,  as  always,  what  would  best  "promote  the  good 
of  mankind." 

His  correspondence  on  his  endowments,  and  a  sketch 
of  the  administration  of  them,  may  properly  be  intro- 
duced by  the  following  letter :  — 

"To  SIR  JOSEPH  BANKS,  Bart.,  K.  B.,  P.  R.  S.,  &c.,  &c.,  &c. 

"LONDON,  I2th  July,  1796. 

u  SIR,  —  Desirous  of  contributing  efficaciously  to  the  advance- 
ment of  a  branch  of  science  which   has  long  employed  my  at- 
tention, and  which  appears  to  be  of  the  highest  imp3rtance  to 
16 


242  Life  of  Coimt  Rumford. 

mankind,  and  wishing  at  the  same  time  to  leave  a  lasting  testi- 
mony of  my  respect  for  the  Royal  Society  of  London,  I  take 
the  liberty  to  request  that  the  Royal  Society  would  do  me  the 
honour  to  accept  of  one  thousand  pounds  stock  in  the  funds  of 
this  country,  which  I  have  actually  purchased,  and  which  I  beg 
leave  to  transfer  to  the  President,  Council,  and  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  to  the  end  that  the  interest  of  the  same  may  be, 
by  them  and  by  their  successors,  received  from  time  to  time  for 
ever,  and  the  amount  of  the  same  applied  and  given  once  every 
second  year  as  a  premium  to  the  author  of  the  most  important 
discovery,  or  useful  improvement,  which  shall  be  made  or  pub- 
lished by  printing,  or  in  any  way  made  known  to  the  publick,  in 
any  part  of  Europe  during  the  preceding  two  years,  on  Heat  or 
on  Light  ;  the  preference  always  being  given  to  such  discov- 
eries as  shall,  in  the  opinion  of  the  President  and  Council,  tend 
most  to  promote  the  good  of  mankind. 

"  With  regard  to  the  formalities  to  be  observed  by  the  Presi- 
dent and  Council  in  their  decisions  upon  the  comparative  merits 
of  those  discoveries  which,  in  the  opinion  of  the  President  and 
Council,  may  entitle  their  authors  to  be  considered  as  competi- 
tors for  this  biennial  premium,  the  President  and  Council  of  the 
Royal  Society  will  be  pleased  to  adopt  such  regulations  as  they 
in  their  wisdom  may  judge  to  be  proper  and  necessary. 

"  But  in  regard  to  the  form  in  which  this  premium  is  con- 
ferred, I  take  the  liberty  to  request  that  it  may  always  be  given 
in  two'  medals,  struck  in  the  same  die,  the  one  of  gold  and  the 
other  of  silver,  and  of  such  dimensions  that  both  of  them  to- 
gether may  be  just  equal  in  intrinsic  value  to  the  amount  of  the 
interest  of  the  aforesaid  one  thousand  pounds  stock  during  two 
years  ;  that  is  to  say,  that  they  may  together  be  of  the  value  of 
Sixty  Pounds  Sterling. 

"The  President  and  Council  of  the  Royal  Society  will  be 
pleased  to  order  such  device  or  inscription  to  be  engraved  on  the 
die  that  they  shall  cause  to  be  prepared  for  striking  these  med- 
als, as  they  may  judge  proper. 

"  If,  during  any  term  of  years,  reckoning  from  the  last  ad- 
judication, or  from  the  last  period  for  the  adjudication  of  this 


Life  of  Count  Ritmford.  243 

Premium  by  the  President  and  Council  of  the  Royal  Society,  no 
new  discovery  or  improvement  should  be  made  in  any  part  of 
Europe  relative  to  either  of  the  subjects  in  question  (Heat  or 
Light)  which  in  the  opinion  of  the  President  and  Council  shall 
be  of  sufficient  importance  to  deserve  this  premium,  in  that  case 
it  is  my  desire  that  the  premium  may  not  be  given,  but  that  the 
value  of  it  may  be  reserved,  and,  being  laid  out  in  the  purchase 
of  additional  stock  in  the  English  funds,  may  be  employed  to 
augment  the  capital  of  this  premium."  And  that  the  interest  of 
the  same,  by  which  the  capital  may  from  time  to  time  be  so 
augmented,  may  regularly  be  given  in  money,  with  the  two 
medals,  and  as  an  addition  to  the  original  premium  at  each 
such  succeeding  adjudication  of  it.  And  it  is  further  my  par- 
ticular request,  that  those  additions  to  the  value  of  the  premium 
arising  from  its  occasional  non-adjudication  may  be  suffered  to 
increase  without  limitation. 

"  With  the  highest  respect  for  the  Royal  Society,  of  London, 
and  the  most  earnest  wishes  for  their  success  in  their  labours  for 
the  good  of  mankind, 

"lam,  &c., 

"  RUMFORD." 

Undoubtedly  the  founder  of  this  premium  was  in- 
fluenced, at  least  in  his  selection  of  the  method  of  it,  by 
the  fact  that  the  Royal  Society  already  had  in  trust  a 
fund  of  one  hundred  pounds  bequeathed  by  Sir  Godfrey 
Copley,  in  1709,  "  to  be  laid  out  in  experiments  or 
otherwise."  The  Society  voted,  in  1736,  "  To  strike  a 
gold  medal  of  the  value  of  £5,  to  bear  the  arms  of 
the  Society,  as  an  honorary  favor  for  the  best  experi- 
ment produced  within  the  year." 

The  Copley  medal  had  been  awarded  to  Benjamin 
Franklin  in  1753,  for  "Curious  Experiments  and  Ob- 
servations on  Electricity."  Rumford  himself  received 
the  same  medal  in  1792,  for  "  Various  Papers  on  the 
Properties  and  Communication  of  Heat." 


244  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

In  accepting  the  munificent  endowment  of  the  Count, 
the  Society,  through  the  Council,  requested  the  Presi- 
dent to  return  their  sincere  thanks  to  the  donor;  and 
at  the  same  time,  as  some  range  of  uncertainty  was 
left  in  the  interpretation  of  terms,  and  questions 
might  arise  as  to  restriction  or  comprehension  of  sub- 
jects to  be  recognized  in  the  award,  he  was  instructed 
to  inquire  how  far  improvements  or  discoveries  in 
optics  and  chemistry  might  come  under  the  Count's 
views. 

This  request  drew  from  Rumford  the  following  com- 
munication he  having  in  the  interval  returned  to  Ba- 
varia :  — 

"MUNICH,  April  26,  1797. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  In  your  last  letter,  you  expressed  a  wish 
that  I  would  write  to  inform  you  how  far,  in  my  opinion,  dis- 
coveries in  Optics,  and  improvements  in  Chemistry  by  the 
agency  of  fire,  ought  to  be  considered  as  being  so  connected 
with  light  or  heat  as  to  be  taken  into  consideration  in  the 
adjudication  of  the  premium  I  have  founded  for  encouraging  the 
investigation  of  those  branches  of  philosophical  enquiry,  and 
improving  the  useful  arts  which  depend  on  them.  Though  I 
am  quite  willing  to  leave  this  question  to  the  decision  of  the 
Royal  Society,  and  shall  certainly  be  perfectly  satisfied  with 
whatever  they  may  determine  respecting  it,  either  as  a  general 
regulation,  or  in  any  particular  case  which  may  occur  j  yet,  as 
you  have  done  me  the  honour  to  call  on  me  for  my  opinion,  I 
think  it  my  duty  to  comply  with  your  request  by  communi- 
cating to  you  my  ideas  on  the  subject. 

"  I  think  that  the  premium  should  be  limited  to  new  dis- 
coveries tending  to  improve  the  theories  of  Fire,  of  Heat,  of 
Light,  and  of  Colours,  and  to  new  inventions  and  contrivances 
by  which  the  generation  and  preservation  and  management  of 
heat  and  of  light  may  be  facilitated.  In  as  far,  therefore,  as 
chemical  discoveries  or  improvements  in  optics  answer  any  of 


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Life  of  Count  R^lnlford.  245 

those  conditions,  they  may,  I  think,  fairly  be  considered  as 
being  within  the  limits  assigned  to  the  operation  of  the  premium. 
The  objects,  however,  which  I  had  more  particularly  in  view  to 
encourage,  are  such  practical  improvements  in  the  generation 
and  management  of  heat  and  of  light  as  to  tend  directly  and 
powerfully  to  increase  the  enjoyments  and  comforts  of  life, 
especially  in  the  lower  and  more  numerous  classes  of  society. 

"  I  am,  &c., 

"RUMFORD." 

Before  this  letter  had  been  penned,  a  committee  of 
the  Council  of  the  Society,  consisting  of  Sir  Charles 
Blagden,  Mr.  Joseph  Planta,  and  Dr.  Combe,  had  been 
appointed,  "  to  consider  and  report  upon  a  design  for  a 
medal."  Subsequently,  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  Dr.  Gray 
(Secretary),  and  Count  Rumford,  who  had  been  chosen 
into  the  Council,  were  added  to  the  Committee,  who, 
on  the  4th  of  April,  1799,  delivered  in  a  Report  with 
the  following  Resolution :  — 

"  Resolved^  That  the  device  on  the  obverse  be  a  tripod  with 
a  flame  upon  it.  And  that  the  inscription  round  the  same  be  part 
of  the  773d  verse  of  the  Vth  Book  of  Lucretius  (De  Rerum  Na- 

turd) :  — 

'  Noscere  qu*e  vis  et  causa? 

"  That  the  inscription  on  the  reverse  be  as  follows :  — 

'  Premium  optime  merenti  ex  instituto  Benj.  a  Rumford,  S.  R.  L. 
Comitis :  adjudicatum  a  Reg.  Soc.  Lond? 

"That  the  diameter  of  the  Medal  do  not  exceed  three  inches. 
That  Mr.  Milton  be  employed  in  sinking  the  dies  of  the  said 
Medal."  * 

The  Report  of  the  Committee  was  accepted  by  the 
Council,  and  the  Resolution  was  approved,  to  be  carried 
into  immediate  execution.  But  from  some  unexplained 

*  The  device  on  the  obverse  was  suggested  by  Mr.  Smirke. 


246  Life  of  Coitnt  Rumford. 

delay  it  was  not  until  the  2d  of  April,  1802,  —  nearly 
six  years  after  Rumford  had  made  his  gift,  —  that  the 
Council  received  the  impressions  from  the  dies  ordered 
from  Mr.  Milton.  These  "  were  approved,  and  orders 
were  given  for  striking  one  gold  and  one  silver  medal 
from  the  same,  according  to  the  regulations  prescribed 
by  the  Council."  The  cost  of  sinking  the  dies  was 
£105,  which  sum  was  paid  out  of  the  funds  of  the 
Society.  The  engraving  which  I  have  procured  of  this 
first  style  of  the  Rumford  Medal  is  copied  from  that  in 
Weld's  History. 

It  was  with  a  most  graceful  courtesy,  as  well  as  in 
conformity  with  the  strictest  construction  of  the  terms 
of  the  premium,  that  the  first  award  of  it  was  made  to 
its  founder.  The  minutes  of  the  Council  of  the  Society 
state,  that  on  the  nth  November,  1802,  "  the  allotment 
of  the  gold  and  silver  medals  on  Count  Rumford's 
foundation  was  taken  into  consideration,  and  the  letter 
respecting  his  donation  was  read,  and  it  appearing  that 
no  discovery  lately  published,  on  the  subjects  to  which 
they  are  limited,  is  of  equal  merit  with  those  of  the 
Count  himselfj  it  was  unanimously  resolved,  by  ballot, 
that  the  said  medals  be  given  to  Benjamin,  Count  Rum- 
ford,  for  his  various  discoveries  on  the  subject  of  heat 
and  light." 

The  next  who  received  the  medals  was  John  Leslie, 
in  1804,  f°r  "Experiments  on  Heat."  The  premium 
was  awarded  in  1806,  1810,  1814,  1816,  1818,  1824, 
l834>  ^3  8,  1840,  1842,  and  1846,  and  thenceforward 
regularly  in  alternate  years. 

Up  to  1846,  several  biennial  periods  having  elapsed 
in  which  no  award  was  made,  the  Rumford  fund, 
through  the  accruing  dividends,  had  increased  from 


Life  of  Count  Rnmford.  247 

£1,000  to  £2,430.  At  that  date,  therefore,  the  re- 
ceiver of  the  prize,  in  accordance  with  the  terms  of 
the  trust,  obtained  a  gold  medal  of  the  value  of  £60, 
one  of  silver,  of  the  value  of  £4,  and  a  money  balance 
of  about  £80.* 

It  will  not  be  inappropriate  for  me  to  copy  here  a 
list  of  the  awards  of  this  medal  which  I  have  gathered 
from  the  journals  of  the  Royal  Society. 

Date  of  Award. 

1802.  Benjamin  Rumford.  For  his  various  Discoveries  re- 
specting Light  and  Heat.  (Phil.  Trans.  1803.) 

1804.     John  Leslie.     Experiments  on  Heat. 

1806.  William  Murdock.  Publication  of  the  Employment 
of  Gas  from  Coal  for  the  Purpose  of  Illumination. 
(Phil.  Trans.  1809.) 

1810.  Etienne-Louis  Malus.  Discovery  of  Certain  Proper- 
ties of  Reflected  Light. 

1814.     William  Charles  Wells.     Essay  on  Dew. 

1816.  Humphry  Davy.  Papers  on  Combustion  and  Flame. 
(Phil.  Trans.  1817,  1818.) 

iSi8.  David  Brewster.  Discoveries  relating  to  the  Polar- 
ization of  Light.  (Phil.  Trans.  1819.)  , 

1824.  Augustin-Jean  Fresnel.  Development  of  the  Undu- 
latory  Theory,  as  applied  to  the  Phenomena  of 
Polarized  Light :  and  for  his  various  Important 
Discoveries  in  Physical  Optics. 

1834.  Macedonio  Melloni.  Discoveries  relative  to  Radiant. 
Heat. 

1838.     James   David  Forbes.     Experiments    on    the    Polari- 
zation of  Heat. 

1840.  Jean  Baptiste  Biot.  Researches  in  and  connected 
with  the  Circular  Polarization  of  Light. 

*  For  all  the  above  particulars  relating  to  the  Rumford  fund  and  medal,  at  the 
disposal  of  the  Royal  Society,  I  am  indebted  to  the  admirable  history  of  that  venera- 
ble institution,  by  Charles  Richard  Weld,  E^q.  London.  1848. 


248  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Date  of  Award. 

1842.  Henry  Fox  Talbot.  Discoveries  and  Improvements 
in  Photography. 

1846.  Michael  Faraday.  Discovery  of  the  Optical  Phe- 
nomena developed  by  the  Action  of  Magnets  and 
Electric  Currents  in  certain  Transparent  Media. 
(Phil.  Trans.  1846.) 

1848.  M.  Regnault.  Experiments  on  Expansion  and  Den- 
sity of  Air,  different  Gases,  and  Mercury. 

1850.  F.  J.  D.  Arago.  Experimental  Investigation  on 
Polarized  Light. 

1852.  Geo.  G.  Stokes.  On  the  Change  of  Refrangibility 
of  Light. 

1854.  Dr.  Neil  Arnott.  A  new  Smoke-Consuming  and 
Fuel-Saving  Plreplace. 

1856.  M.  Pasteur.  Discovery  of  the  Nature  of  Racemic 
Acid,  and  its  Relations  to  Polarized  Light. 

1858.  M.  Jamin.  Various  Experimental  Researches  on 
Light. 

1860.  Prof.  James  Clark  Maxwell.  Researches  on  the 
Composition  of  Colors,  and  other  Optical  Papers. 

1862.  Prof.  Kirchhoff.  Researches  on  the  Fixed  Lines  of 
the  Solar  Spectrum,  &c. 

1864.  Prof.  John  Tyndall.  Researches  on  the  Absorption 
and  Radiation  of  Heat  by  Gases  and  Vapors. 

1866.  M.  Armand  Hippolyte  Louis  Fizeau.  Optical  Re- 
searches and  Investigations  into  the  Effect  of  Heat 
on  the  Refractive  Power  of  Transparent  Bodies. 

1868.  Mr.  Balfour  Stewart.  Researches  on  the  Qualitative 
as  well  as  Quantitative  Relations  between  the 
Powers  of  Emission  and  Absorption  of  Bodies  for 
Heat  and  Light. 

Count  Rumford  was  probably  well  aware  of  the  conten- 
tion and  ill-feeling  that  had  arisen  in  the  Royal  Society, 
some  years  before,  because  those  who  administered  the 
trust  for  the  Copley  Medal  considered  foreigners  equally 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  249 

entitled  with  Englishmen  to  be  candidates  for  its  award. 
Sir  Gilbert  had  neither  restricted  nor  expressly  extended 
the  terms  of  his  bequest  in  that  regard.  Rumford, 
in  emphatic  language,  made  the  whole  of  Europe, 
continent  and  islands,  the  field  for  such  stimulation 
of  rivalry,  and  such  recognition  of  desert,  as  might 
attach  to  his  premium  of  tenfold  intrinsic  value.  It 
will  be  seen  from  the  list  that  has  been  given,  that 
ten  of  the  twenty-four  distinguished  men  who  have 
received  his  award  from  the  Royal  Society  have  been 
foreigners,  Mr.  Wells  being  of  America.  The  fact 
has  a  significance  when  taken  in  connection  with  the 
well-known  effort  which  is  required  of  Englishmen, 
whether  men  of  science,  or  statesmen,  or  private  per- 
sons, to  extend  their  impartiality  beyond  their  own 
country. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  Count,  after  having  liber- 
ally provided  funds  for  medals  in  the  award  of  two 
learned  bodies,  should  a  few  years  afterwards,  when 
drawing  his  plan  and  publishing  his  proposals  for  his 
own  Royal  Institution,  have  introduced  into  them  an 
express  prohibition  of  all  premiums  and  rewards. 

A  new  die  for  the  Rumford  Medal  of  the  Royal 
Society  has  since  been  adopted,  from  which  Dr.  H. 
Bence  Jones  has  kindly  sent  me  a  copy,  as  shown  in  the 
engraving.  The  head  of  Rumford  which  is  engraved 
upon  it  is  copied  from  a  portrait  of  him  painted  in 
Munich,  which  hung  in  the  Count's  house  at  Bromp- 
ton,  and  which  was  presented  to  the  Society  by  his 
daughter,  in  December,  .1831. 

The  Count's  correspondence  with  reference  to  his 
endowment  in  this  country  begins  with  the  following 
letter  :  — 


250  Life  of  Count  R^tmford. 

"LONDON,  July  12,  1796. 

"  To  the  HON.  JOHN  ADAMS,  President  of  the  American 
Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences. 

«  SIR,  —  Desirous  of  contributing  efficaciously  to  the  ad- 
vancement of  a  branch  of  science  which  has  long  employed  my 
attention,  and  which  appears  to  me  to  be  of  the  highest  impor- 
tance to  mankind,  and  wishing  at  the  same  time  to  leave  a  last- 
ing testimony  of  my  respect  for  the  American  Academy  of  Arts 
and  Sciences,  I  take  the  liberty  to  request  that  the  Academy 
would  do  me  the  honour  to  accept  of  Five  Thousand  Dollars, 
three  per  cent  stock  in  the  funds  of  the  United  States  of  North 
America,  which  Stock  I  have  actually  purchased,  and  which  I 
beg  leave  to  transfer  to  the  Fellows  of  the  Academy,  to  the  end 
that  the  interest  of  the  same  may  be  by  them,  and  by  their 
successors,  received  from  time  to  time,  forever,  and  the  amount 
of  the  same  applied  and  given  once  every  second  year,  as  a 
premium,  to  the  author  of  the  most  important  discovery  or  use- 
ful improvement,  which  shall  be  made  and  published  by  printing, 
or  in  any  way  made  known  to  the  publick,  in  any  part  of  the 
Continent  of  America,  or  in  any  of  the  American  Islands,  dur- 
ing the  preceding  two  years,  on  Heat,  or  on  Light ;  the  prefer- 
ence always  being  given  to  such  discoveries  as  shall,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  Academy,  tend  most  to  promote  the  good  of 
mankind. 

"  With  regard  to  the  formalities  to  be  observed  by  the  Acad- 
emy in  their  decisions  upon  the  comparative  merits  of  those 
discoveries  which  in  the  opinion  of  the  Academy  may  entitle 
their  Authors  to  be  considered  as  competitors  for  this  bien- 
nial premium,  the  Academy  will  be  pleased  to  adopt  such 
regulations  as  they  in  their  wisdom  may  judge  to  be  proper 
and  necessary. 

"  But  in  regard  to  the  form  in  which  this  Premium  is  con- 
ferred, I  take  the  liberty  to  request  that  it  may  always  be  given 
in  two  medals,  struck  in  the  same  die,  the  one  of  gold  and  the 
other  of  silver,  and  of  such  dimensions  that  both  of  them 
together  may  be  just  equal  in  intrinsic  value  to  the  amount  of 
interest  of  the  aforesaid  Five  Thousand  Dollars  stock  during 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  251 

two   years  :    that   is    to  say,  that  they  may  together  be  of  the 
value  of  Three  Hundred  Dollars. 

"  The  Academy  will  be  pleased  to  order  such  device  or 
inscription  to  be  engraved  on  the  die  they  shall  cause  to  be 
prepared  for  striking  these  medals,  as  they  may  judge  proper. 

"  If  during  any  term  of  two  years,  reckoning  from  the  last 
adjudication,  or  from  the  last  period  for  the  adjudication  of  this 
Premium  by  the  Academy,  no  new  discovery  or  improvement 
should  be  made  in  any  part  of  America,  relative  to  either  of  the 
subjects  in  question  (Heat  or  Light),  which,  in  the  opinion  of 
the  Academy  shall  be  of  sufficient  importance  to  deserve  this 
Premium,  in  that  case,  it  is  my  desire  that  the  Premium  may 
not  be  given,  but  that  the  value  of  it  may  be  reserved,  and  by 
laying  out  in  the  purchase  of  additional  stock  in  the  American 
funds,  may  be  applied  to  augment  the  capital  of  this  Premium  ; 
and  that  the  interest  of  the  sums  by  which  the  capital  may, 
from  time  to  time,  be  so  augmented,  may  regularly  be  given  in 
money  with  the  two  medals,  and  as  an  addition  to  the  original 
Premium  at  each  succeeding  adjudication  of  it.  And  it  is 
further  my  particular  request,  that  those  additions  to  the  value 
of  the  Premium  arising  from  its  occasional  non-adjudication 
may  be  suffered  to  increase  without  limitation. 

"  With  the  highest  respect  for  the  American  Academy  of 
Arts  and  Sciences,  and  the  most  earnest  wishes  for  their  success 
in  their  labours  for  the  good  of  mankind, 

"  I  have  the  honour  to  be,  with  much  Esteem  and  Regard,  Sir, 
Your  most  Obedient,  Humble  Servant, 

«  RUMFORD." 

His  intended  donation  was  first  announced  by  this 
letter  from  Count  Rumford  read  at  a  meeting  of  the 
Academy,  November  9,  1796,  accompanied  by  the  gift 
of  a  volume  of  his  Essays,  and  of  what  is  described  in 
the  records  as  his  "  bust,"  though  it  was  a  small  bass- 
relief  profile.  The  delay  in  the  receipt  of  the  proper 
papers,  and  in  the  negotiation  connected  with  the  trans- 


252  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

fer  of  the  funds,  caused  chiefly  by  the  capture  of  a 
vessel  on  board  of  which  were  the  necessary  legal  docu- 
ments, of  course  deferred  the  proper  and  decisive  action 
of  the  Academy  in  recognizing,  as  they  appreciated, 
Count  Rumford's  noble  endowment.  Compared  with 
the  gifts  which  previously  to  that  time  had  been  made 
by  individuals  to  Harvard  College,  and  by  Dr.  Frank- 
lin to  provide  medals  for  scholars  in  our  public  schools, 
and  a  loan  fund  for  the  encouragement  of  worthy  me- 
chanics, —  which  latter  provision  remains  still  accumu- 
lating to  be  appropriated,  as  it  never  yet  has  been, 
according  to  the  wishes  of  the  donor,  —  Count  Rum- 
ford's  donation  had  a  character  of  munificence.  The 
members  of  the  Academy  regarded  it  as  the  most 
helpful  and  encouraging  recognition  which  their  Insti- 
tution had  received  during  the  sixteen  years  of  its  ex- 
istence. The  correspondence  of  our  few  learned  and 
scientific  men,  who  were  then  pursuing  their  high  aims 
under  great  disadvantages,  recognizes  with  enthusiasm 
and  congratulation  this  auspicious  incident,  and  finds 
in  it  an  impulse  and  a  motive  for  activity  and  zeal 
in  its  work. 

The  Academy  had  been  instituted  and  incorporated 
in  the  year  1780,  midway  in  the  war  of  our  Revolution, 
amid  all  the  distractions  and  exactions  of  that  trying 
period.  While  the  whole  community  was  burdened  by 
taxation  and  the  exorbitant  prices  of  the  articles  of 
prime  necessity,  and  while  it  might  seem  that  the 
thoughts  and  time  of  all  intelligent  men  would  have 
been  engrossed  by  giving  to  public  affairs  all  the  interest 
they  could  spare  from  their  private  concerns,  a  few 
men  of  cultivated  and  generous  minds  devised  the  plan 
of  this  Institution.  It  is  a  very  singular  fact,  that  all 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  253 

the  most  distinguished  of  the  now  existing  and  flourish- 
ing learned  bodies  of  Christendom  originated  and  were 
organized  under  similar  circumstances,  in  periods  of 
distraction  and  strife.  The  Royal  Society  of  London 
was  an  incorporation,  in  1661,  of  a  society  of  gentlemen 
interested  in  scientific  objects,  who  had  been  meeting  for 
many  previous  years  to  encourage  and  help  one  another 
in  their  pursuits.  It  was  amid  the  heated  and  alienat- 
ing strifes  of  political  and  religious  animosity  inflaming 
all  classes  of  the  people,  that  those  who  loved  science 
and  high  culture,  and  were  within  easy  reach  of  inter- 
course, gathered  in  a  little  coterie  in  London.  They 
realized  that,  if  they  would  mutually  tolerate  and  enjoy 
each  other's  presence  and  sympathy  in  their  professed 
objects,  they  must  carefully  exclude  all  recognition  of  the 
distractions  outside  of  their  fellowship.  As  one  of  the 
foremost  of  them,  Dr.  Wallis,  writing  of  the  year  1645, 
quaintly  says  of  their  coming  together,  "when  (to  avoid 
diversion  to  other  discourses,  and  for  some  other  rea- 
sons) we  barred  all  discourses  of  divinity,  state  affairs, 
and  of  news,  other  than  what  concerned  our  business  of 
Philosophy."  The  French  National  Institute,  estab- 
lished in  1796,  offered  a  similar  refuge  from  the  embit- 
terments  of  revolutionary  times  for  those  who  could 
subordinate  their  party  or  polemical  divisions  to  a  zeal 
for  researches  and  labors  which  would  accrue  to  the 
welfare  of  a  common  humanity. 

Count  Rumford  had  been  elected  a  Foreign  Honor- 
ary Member  of  the  Academy  on  May  29,  1789. 

The  first  recognition  which  the  Academy  made  to 
Count  Rumford  of  his  purposed  benefaction  was  through 
the  following  letter,  which  I  copy  from  the  original  on 
the  files. 


254  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  SIR,  —  At  a  meeting  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts 
and  Sciences,  the  Qth  instant,  were  communicated  by  the  Presi- 
dent your  very  acceptable  favors  of  the  I2th  July.  In  reply  to 
which,  permit  me  the  honor  to  request  your  acceptance  of  the 
thanks  of  the  Academy  for  your  very  polite  and  obliging  present 
of  the  first  volume  of  your  ingenious  and  useful  Essays,  and  for 
the  pleasing  and  elegant  profile  of  their  Author.  I  am  also 
charged  by  the  Academy  to  give  you  every  possible  assurance, 
not  only  of  the  lively  emotions  of  gratitude  inspired  by  your 
generous  ^nd  truly  noble  proposal  of  transferring  to  the  Acad- 
emy, for  the  important  purposes  expressed  in  your  letter,  five 
thousand  dollars  of  the  three  per  cent  stock  of  the  United 
States,  but  likewise  of  their  conscious  obligation  and  cheerful 
readiness  sacredly  to  apply  the  interest  of  the  same  as  directed 
by  the  munificent  donor.  Excuse  my  adding,  that  the  Academy 
is  sensibly  affected,  not  only  by  the  liberality  of  this  appropria- 
tion, but  by  the  delicate  manner  in  which  it  is  made. 

"  Supposing  it  possible,  though  not  probable,  that  you  might 
be  unacquainted  with  the  method  of  transferring  American 
stocks,  the  President  suggested  the  expediency  of  enclosing  an 
abstract  of  the  mode  of  making  transfers  at  our  offices.  Ac- 
cordingly, I  waited  on  Mr.  Appleton,  the  Loan  Officer  in  this 
State,  and  from  his  letter  have  transcribed  the  enclosed  extract. 

"  Agreeably  to  Mr.  Appleton's  ideas  I  have  also  taken  the 
liberty  of  naming  two  gentlemen  in  the  vicinity  of  Boston  who 
will  be  happy  to  execute  your  orders,  if  empowered  to  transfer 
the  stock  aforesaid  to  the  c  American  Academy  of  Arts  and 
Sciences,'  either  jointly  or  severally,  as  you  may  think  proper, 
viz.,  the  Rev.  Joseph  Willard,  D.  D.,  of  Cambridge,  and  the 
Hon.  Loammi  Baldwin,  Esq.,  of  Woburn,  both  in  the  county 
of  Middlesex.  These  gentlemen,  or  either  of  them,  would,  I 
doubt  not,  faithfully  and  cheerfully  discharge  the  trust,  whether 
the  stock  were  issued  from  the  office  in  Boston  or  from  any 
other  office  in  the  United  States.  But  if  some  other  gentle- 
man will  be  more  agreeable  to  you,  sir,  he  will  be  so  to  the 
Academy.  I  have,  however,  to  ask  your  pardon  of  this  free- 
dom, as  my  only  object  is  to  facilitate  the  business. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  255 

u  I  ought  not  to  trespass  further  on  your  patience.  But  I 
knew  not  how  to  close  without  acknowledging  the  obligations 
imposed  on  me,  and  I  think  on  the  world,  by  your  late  publica- 
tions. Some  of  your  former  ingenious  and  philosophical  com- 
munications to  the  Royal  Society  I  read  with  great  delight. 
But  your  Essays  have  filled  me  with  transport.  Such  phi- 
lanthropy, so  well  directed  zeal,  and  such  unwearied  diligence 
in  promoting  the  common  good  of  mankind,  more  especially  of 
the  indigent  and  helpless,  bespeak  a  godlike  mind,  and  command 
the  warmest  gratitude  and  most  sincere  respect  of  every  benevo- 
lent mind.  It  is, a  happiness,  a  great  happiness,  even  to, th'  .k 
that  there  is  on  earth  a  man  who  can  and  will  interest  himself 
so  efficaciously,  and  in  so  great  a  variety  of  ways,  for  the  good 
of  the  human  species.  Your  unprecedented  success  also  inspires 
new  and  pleasing  hopes  concerning  the  most  miserable  of  our 
race,  and  calls  into  doubt  the.  common  doctrine  of  habits. 
When  such  numbers,  so  long  accustomed  to  idleness  and  vice, 
are  reclaimed  to  industry  and  order,  we  are  led  to  expect  that 
the  Ethiopian  will  erelong  change  his  skin,  and  the  leopard  his 
spots.  But  I  forbear.  Accept  the  well-meant  tribute  of  my 
thanks,  and  permit  me  to  join  the  poor  of  Munich  and  many 
other  cities,  and  with  all  the  friends  of  humanity,  in  fervent  sup- 
plication to  the  Author  of  all  good  for  the  preservation  of  your 
life,  and  for  the  confirmation  of  your  health,  and  for  increased 
and  extensive  success  to  your  multiplied  labors  and  Institutions 
for  the  good  of  mankind. 

u  With  these  wishes,  and  with  sentiments  of  unfeigned  re- 
spect, I  am,  sir, 

"  Your  much  obliged,  and  most  humble  servant, 

"ELIPHALET  PEARSON,  Corresponding  Secretary. 

"CAMBRIDG?,  I4th  November,  1796. 
COUNT  RUMFORD." 

Count  Rumford  made  the  following  reply  to  Pro- 
fessor Pearson,  which  also  I  copy  from  the  original  on 
file:  — 


256  Life  of  Count  Rum  ford. 

"MUNICH,  I4th  February,  1797. 

"  SIR, —  I  have  received  your  very  obliging  letter  of  the  I4th 
November,  1796.  The  honor  which  the  worthy  President  and 
the  Fellows  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences 
have  conferred  on  me  by  accepting  the  proposals  I  took  the 
liberty  of  making  to  them  in  my  letter  to  the  President,  of  the 
1 2th  July,  1796,  has  given  me  the  highest  satisfaction;  and  I 
beg,  Sir,  that  you  would  express  to  them  my  warmest  thanks, 
and  assure  them  that  it  will  be  the  study  of  my  life  to  deserve 
this  flattering  proof  of  their  esteem  and  regard. 

"  I  am  much  obliged  to  you,  Sir,  for  the  pains  you  have 
taken  to  make  me  so  completely  acquainted  with  everything  I 
could  wish  to  know  respecting  the  business  of  transferring 
American  Stock.  Enclosed  I  send  you  a  power  authorizing 
the  two  Gentlemen  you  proposed  —  and  two  Gentlemen  more 
agreeable  to  me  could  not  have  been  found  —  to  transfer  'to 
the  Fellows  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences,' 
Five  Thousand  Dollars,  assured  debt,  entered  to  my  credit  in 
the  Books,  of  the  Treasury  of  the  United  States,  for  which  a 
certificate  numbered  2633  was  issued  in  my  name  on  the 
Fourth  day  of  March,  1796.  That  this  stock  actually  stands 
in  my  name  in  the  Books  of  the  Treasury  of  the  United  States, 
I  am  assured  by  a  notarial  Declaration  of  Peter  Lohra,  Notary 
Public  for  the  Commonwealth  of  Pennsylvania,  residing  in  the 
City  of  Philadelphia,  dated  the  27th  October,  1796,  a  copy  of 
which  is  inclosed.  But,  very  unfortunately,  the  vessel  in  which 
the  original  certificate  (with  two  others  of  equal  amount)  was 
sent  to  Europe  was  lost  on  her  passage.  How  long  this  acci- 
dent will  delay  the  completion  of  the  business  in  question  I 
know  not,  but  nothing  in  my  power  shall  be  left  undone  to  fin- 
ish it  as  soon  as  possible.  In  the  mean  time  I  have  taken  the 
most  effectual  measures  I  could  devise  to  secure  to  the  Acad- 
emy the  property  they  have  done  me  the  honor  to  accept,  and 
have  given  directions  that  the  Interest  of  the  Five  Thousand 
Dollars  three  per  cent  Stock  in  question  should  be  paid  regularly 
to  the  Treasurer  of  the  Academy  from  the  first  of  January, 
1797,  till  the  transfer  of  the  Capital  can  be  made.  In  short,  I 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  257 

consider  this  Property  as  being  no  longer  mine,  and  I  have  ex- 
erted myself  to  the  utmost  of  my  abilities  in  the  enclosed  dec- 
laration —  which  I  hope  may  pass  for  a  Deed  of  gift,  however  it 
may  be  defective  in  point  of  form  —  to  put  it  legally  out  of  my 
power.  In  all  events,  however,  even  should  there  be  a  flaw  in 
this  Instrument,  and  should  I  die  before  the  transfer  of  the 
Stock  could  be  made,  as  in  my  last  Will  and  Testament  which 
is  lodged  in  the  hands  of  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  Baronet,  of  Soho 
Square,  London,  President  of  the  Royal  Society,  I  have  be- 
queathed Five  Thousand  Dollars  three  per  cent  American  Stock 
to  the  Academy  for  the  purposes  mentioned  in  my  letter  to  the 
President  of  the  Academy,  of  the  I2th  July  last,  no  accident 
that  can  possibly  happen  can  prevent  the  accomplishment  of  my 
wishes  with  respect  to  this  business. 

"  Inclosed  is  a  letter  from  me  to  the  Directors  of  the  Bank 
of  the  United  States,  which  I  beg  you  would  close  with  a  seal 
and  forward,  when  you  shall  have  perused  it  and  taken  a  copy 
of  it  for  the  information  of  the  Academy,  who  will  be  pleased 
to  take  such  measures  in  regard  to  the  business  in  question  as 
they  may  think  proper.  It  will  give  me  great  pleasure  to  learn 
that  Dr.  Willard,  and  my  friend,  Colonel  Baldwin,  have  found 
means  to  complete  this  business  by  making  the  transfer  of  the 
Stock,  but  if  anything  more  should  be  necessary  to  be  done  by 
me  to  enable  them  to  finish  the  transaction,  you  or  they  will  be 
pleased  to  acquaint  me  with  what  I  can  do  farther  to  expedite 
and  facilitate  the  business. 

"  Begging  you  would  assure  the  American  Academy  of  Arts 
and  Sciences  of  my  best  respects,  and  of  my  unfeigned  gratitude 
for  the  distinguished  honor  they  have  conferred  on  me,  I  am, 
Sir,  with  great  regard  and  esteem, 

"  Your  most  obedient  humble  Servant, 

"RUMFORD. 

"  MR.  PEARSON,  Secretary,  £c." 

The  paper,  duly  signed  and  witnessed,  by  which  the 
transfer  of  stocks  was  made  to  the  Academy,  is  preserved 
in  duplicate  in  our  archives.      The  two  bearing  the  seal 
17 


258  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

of  Count  Rumford,  partially  defaced  in  each,  furnish 
together  the  means  by  which  the  engraver  has  prepared 
the  copy  attached  to  the  autograph  signature  of  our  bene- 
factor. 

The  portion  of  the  instrument  presented  on  the  plate 
upon*  the  opposite  page  is  not  a  very  fair  specimen  of  the 
handwriting  of  the  author,  being  coarser  and  more  ir- 
regular. The  signatures  of  his  friend,  the  Countess  of 
Nogarola,  and  of  his  daughter,  witnessing  the  instru- 
ment, are  its  proper  accompaniments. 

The  inner  legend  of  the  seal  is  Pro  Fide,  Rege,  et  Lege. 

The  lower  one  is  Dulce  est  meminisse  laborum. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Academy,  Jan.  31,  1798,  it  was 

"  Voted,  That  the  thanks  of  the  Academy  be  presented  to  Count 
Rumford  for  his  very  generous  donation  for  the  use  of  this 
Institution,  and  that  a  committee  be  now  appointed  to  draught  a 
vote  for  that  purpose,  to  be  reported  to  the  Council,  or,  accord- 
ing to  circumstances,  to  the  Academy  at  their  meeting,  as  soon 
as  it  shall  appear  that  a  legal  transfer  of  the  property  shall  have 
been  made,  and  that  it  be  immediately  after  transmitted  to  that 
liberal  benefactor  of  mankind. 

"  Voted,  That  the  committee  for  the  above  purpose  be  John 
Davis,  Esq.,  Mr.  Professor  Pearson,  and  Dr.  Warren. 

"  Voted,  That  a  committee  be  appointed  to  take  up  the  sub- 
ject of  Count  Rumford's  donation,  and  report  at  the  next 
meeting  of  the  Academy  their  opinion  of  the  best  method  of 
carrying  his  generous  design  into  execution,  as  expressed  in 
his  letter  to  the  President  of  the  Aca.demy. 

tc  That  the  Committee  for  the  above  purpose  be,  President 
Willard,  Hon.  Judge  Paine,  Mr.  Professor  Pearson,  Mr.  Gan- 
nett, and  the  Hon.  Judge  Winthrop. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Academy,  May  29,  1798,  the 
Report  of  the  first  Committee,  which  was  as  follows,  was 
accepted :  — 


Life  of  Cotint  Rumford.  259 

tc  Whereas  Benjamin,  Count  of  Rumford,  of  Munich,  in 
Bavaria,  has  presented  to  this  Institution  the  sum  of  Five 
Thousand  Dollars  in  three  per  cent  stock  of  the  United  States, 
the  interest  of  which,  by  the  terms  of  the  donation  as  expressed 
in  his  letter  of  July  12,  1796,  to  the  President  of  the  Academy, 
is  to  be  'applied  and  given  ....  Heat  or  Light,'  which  dona- 
tion has  been  accepted  by  the  Academy,  and  by  proper  certifi- 
cates, which  accident  only  has  delayed,  has  now  become  the 
property  of  the  Academy. 

"  Voted,  That  the  thanks  of  the  Academy  be  presented  to 
Count  Rumford  for  this  his  very  generous  donation,  and  that 
they  experience  the  highest  satisfaction  in  receiving  this  ad- 
ditional and  very  liberal  aid  for  the  encouragement  and  exten- 
sion of  those  branches  of  science  which  he  has  so  successfully 
cultivated.  That  they  entertain  a  high  sense  of  the  sentiments 
and  views,  so  becoming  to  a  Philosopher,  which  have  prompted 
him  to  this  distinguished  act  of  liberality  ;  and  in  the  execution 
of  the  grateful  office  which  they  have  undertaken  of  awarding 
and  distributing  the  premiums  which  Count  Rumford  has  thus 
appropriated  they  will  sacredly  comply  with  the  conditions  of 
the  donation,  indulging  the  hope  that  he  will  meet  his  reward 
in  learning  that  many  in  his  native  country  are  thereby  excited 
to  emulate  his  labors  and  to  promote  the  accomplishment  of 
his  beneficent  wishes  for  the  advancement  of  science  and  the 
augmentation  of  human  happiness. 

"  Voted,  That  the  Corresponding  Secretary  be  requested  to 
transmit  a  copy  of  the  preceding  vote  to  Count  Rumford  by  the 
earlie'st  opportunity." 

At  a  meeting  on  May  28,  1799?  probably  by  sug- 
gestion of  the  second  committee  above  appointed,  it  was 

"  Voted,  That  the  Secretary  of  the  Academy  cause  the 
terms  of  Count  Rumford's  donation  to  be  published  in  the 
several  capitals  of  the  different  States,  and  in  some  of  the  Amer- 
ican Islands,  and  information  that  the  Academy  are  ready  to 
adjudge  the  premium,  provided  for  by  Count  Rumford,  to  the 
person  or  persons  who  shall  appear  to  be  entitled  to  the  same." 


260  Life  of  Coimt  Rumford. 

Among  the  same  files  from  which  the  above  docu- 
ments are  copied,  are  papers  relating  to  several  applica- 
tions made  by  themselves,  or  by  friends  in  behalf  of 
those  who  either  sought  aid  from  the  fund  in  pursuing 
their  experiments,  or  advanced  a  claim  for  discoveries 
or  improvements  of  a  sort  to  entitle  them  to  the  award 
of  the  medal.  And  here,  departing  from  the  order  of 
time  as  regards  events  in  the  life  of  Count  Rumford,  it 
may  be  allowable,  as  it  is  convenient,  to  trace  the  his- 
tory of  the  administration  of  the  trust  for  the  premium 
or  medal  by  the  Academy.  While  the  Royal  Society 
had  the  whole  Continent  and  all  the  Islands  of  Europe 
as  a  field  for  selecting  the  recipients  of  its  biennial 
award  of  the  Rumford  medals  from  among  those  numer- 
ous savans  who  by  their  researches  and  discoveries 
should  reach  results  entitling  them  to  the  honor,  the 
Academy,  with  larger  space,  indeed,  for  its  oversight, 
was  at  a  manifest  disadvantage  as  regarded  the  likeli- 
hood of  finding  once  in  each  period  of  two  years  a 
subject  of  the  same  award.  At  first  thought  it  may 
seem  to  one  who  has  not  thoroughly  and  with  broad 
and  full  information  considered  the  facts  of  the  case, 
that  the  Academy  has  been  too  exacting  in  the  condi- 
tions which  it  has  set  and  applied  in  administering  its 
trust,  and  that  it  has  had  in  view  a  requisition  of  Scien- 
tific discoveries  in  reference  to  heat  and  light  of  such 
signal  and  conspicuous  character  as  can  but  very  rarely 
reveal  themselves,  even  in  the  steadily  progressive  course 
of  experimental  philosophy.  And  then,  having  before 
us  in  contrast  the  eminently  practical  and  economical, 
we  may  even  say  thrifty  and  homely,  nature  and  utility 
of  Count  Rumford' s  own  inventions,  methods,  and 
appliances,  another  suggestion  might  naturally  present 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  261 

itself.  We  have  had  to  bring  him  before  us  as  actually 
engaged  with  his  own  hands  in  constructing  chimney- 
flues,  kitchens,  and  cooking-utensils,  and  have  yet  to 
speak  and  read  of  him  as  introducing  improvements  in 
common  household  lamps.  If  now  any  one  should 
have  visited  and  examined  the  kitchens  and  the  sitting- 
rooms  of  New  England  during  the  last  fifty  years,  or 
read  the  advertisements  in  the  newspapers  and  the  shop- 
cards  so  freely  distributed,  announcing'  wonderful  im- 
provements in  stoves,  furnaces,  and  lamps,  or  .gas- 
burners,  and  have  added  to  these  observations  a  walk 
through  the  departments  of  the  Patent  Office  at  Wash- 
ington assigned  to  such  apparatus,  he  would  be  most 
likely  to  infer  that  the  Academy  could  have  been  at  no 
loss  to  find  a  proper  recipient  of  the  Rumford  Medal 
once  in  each  two  years.  But  it  has  proved  to  be 
otherwise.  The  Academy  promised  sacredly  to  dis- 
charge its  trust.  The  homeliness  or  economical  char- 
acter of  an  invention  or  a  discovery  would  never  have 
offended  its  dignity  if  a  just  claim  had  been  based  upon 
it.  The  Academy,  as  we  have  seen,  took  measures  to 
circulate  through  the  public  prints  the  knowledge  that  it 
had  an  honorable  award  at  its  disposal  for  all  who  were 
entitled  to  receive  it.  The  correspondence  and  applica- 
tions on  its -files,  and  the  numerous  reports  of  its  in- 
vestigating committees,  prove  that  there  has  been  no 
lack  of  notoriety  as  to  the  facts  and  objects  of  its  trus- 
teeship, nor  of  a  disposition  to  do  full  justice  to  all 
who  sought  a  hearing  from  it.  But  until  the  year  1839 
the  Academy,  in  the  exercise  of  its  best  discretion  and 
under  the  guidance  of  its  common  conscience,  had  not 
once  made  the  award  of  the  Rumford  Medal. 

Meanwhile   the  fund    had    accumulated    by   its    own 


262  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

interest  so  as  to  present  in  itself  a  matter  of  embarrass- 
ment. A  committee  of  the  Academy  chosen  for  the 
purpose,  consisting  of  the  eminent  Dr.  Nathaniel  Bow- 
ditch,  President  Josiah  Quincy  of  Harvard  College, 
and  the  Hon.  Francis  C.  Gray,  made  a  Report  at 
the  end  of  December,  1829,  which  resulted  in  legisla- 
tive and  judicial  measures  for  relieving  this  embarass- 
ment. 

The  Academy  had  given  its  pledge,  while  Count 
Rurnford  still  lived,  that  it  would  "  sacredly  comply 
with  the  conditions  of  the  donation."  These  condi- 
tions were  mainly  two,  —  one  of  them,  however,  being 
limited  by  the  other.  The  Academy  was  to  have  in 
view  the  award  of  its  medal  once  in  two  years,  but  it 
was  to  be  given  only  to  the  author  of  the  most  im- 
portant discovery  or  useful  improvement  made  in  the 
two  preceding  years  on  heat  or  on  light,  on  the  Amer- 
ican Continent  or  any  of  its  Islands.  To  refuse  to 
award  the  medal  to  one  who  had  a  right  to  it,  or  to 
bestow  it  on  a  claimant  who  had  no  sufficient  merit,  or 
upon  a  favored  experimenter,  for  the  sake  of  not  allow- 
ing the  biennial  award  to  fail,  would  have  equally 
thwarted  the  intent  of  the  donor.  A  discovery  or  an 
improvement  of  a  sort  to  satisfy  the  terms  which  Count 
Rumford  could  define  only  relatively,  because  not  admit- 
ting of  an  arbitrary  or  of  an  absolute  measurement,  was 
the  requisite  fact  to  engage  the  attention  of  the  Acad- 
emy. As  such  discovery  or  improvement  was  to  have 
been  made  a  matter  of  public  notoriety  by  printing  "or 
otherwise,"  and  as  the  Academy  had  taken  measures  for 
giving  the  widest  circulation  to  the  terms  of  the  trust 
which  they  held,  it  was  not  likely  that  ignorance  on  the 
side  of  either  party  concerned  would  deprive  any  one  who 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  263 

might  justly  be  entitled  to  the  premium  of  the  honor 
which  it  would  confer.  The  committee  above  named 
say  in  their  Report,  that  the  premium  had  not  up  to 
that  date  been  awarded,  "  none  of  the  discoveries  or 
improvements  for  which  it  has  been  claimed  being 
deemed  by  the  Academy  of  sufficient  importance  to 
deserve  it."  The  Report  continues:  — 

"  By  constant  accumulation  the  fund  has  now  increased  to 
the  sum  of  nearly  $20,000.  The  history  of  science  in  other 
countries  unites  with  our  own  experience  to  convince  us  that 
Count  Rumford's  plan,  contemplating  the  assignment  of  a 
biennial  premium  for  important  discoveries  or  useful  improve- 
ments on  light  and  heat  first  made  public  within  two  years  pre- 
ceding, and  interrupted  only  by  c  occasional  non-adjudications,' 
is  absolutely  impracticable.  Such  discoveries  and  improvements 
are  not  often  made,  and  many  of  those  which  are  made  require 
more  than  two  years  to  test  their  merit.  It  is  perfectly  mani- 
fest that  the  non-adjudication  must  be  the  regular  and  usual 
'course,  and  that  the  assignments  of  the  premium  must  be 
occasional,  and  even  rare.  The  very  increase  of  the  fund  con- 
stantly increases  the  difficulty  of  bestowing  the  premium  ;  for 
the  Academy  are  expressly  directed  to  award  it  only  to  improve- 
ments or  discoveries  of  sufficient  importance  in  their  opinion  to 
deserve  it,  and  an  invention  may  merit  a  premium  of  $  300, 
which  is  altogether  unworthy  of  one  of  $2,000.  A  strict  com- 
pliance with  the  incidental  request  that  the  fund  should  increase 
indefinitely  may  therefore  prevent  the  assignment  of  any  pre- 
mium at  all,  and  thus  entirely  defeat  the  great  object  of  the 
foundation,  and  render  it  totally  useless.  To  permit  such  a 
result  is  not  a  faithful  fulfilment  of  the  intentions  of  the 
donor. 

"  If  it  be  found,  by  long  experience,  that  a  rigid  adherence  to 
particular  limitations,  not  essential  to  the  main  object  of  the 
Institution,  tends  to  defeat  that  object,  it  must  .be  presumed  that 
the  founder  would  wish  those  limitations  modified,  and  it  is  the 
bounden  duty  of  the  Academy,  and  of  all  who  have  an  interest 


264  Life  of  Count  Rumford.. 

in  his  property,  to  endeavor  to  have  them  so  modified  as  to  pro- 
mote the  attainment  of  the  end  which  he  proposed." 

The  committee  add,  as  another  important  considera- 
tion, that  in  providing  that  the  additional  income  of  the 
fund  accruing  from  an  occasional  non-adjudication  of 
the  premium  should  be  given  to  its  next  recipient, 
Rumford  could  hardly  have  foreseen  that  the  accessory 
would  ever  so  far  exceed  the  principal.  The  income  of 
the  fund  for  two  years  being  at  the  time  two  thousand 
dollars,  and  steadily  increasing,  it  would  be  extravagant 
to  award  it  as  a  premium.  cc  It  must  lose  the  char- 
acter of  a  prize,  and  be  sought  with  mercenary  views, 
rather  than  as  an  honorable  distinction." 

The  Report  closed  with  "a  plan  for  facilitating  the 
awarding  of  the  premium  and  applying  the  surplus 
income,"  as  the  best  they  could  "  devise  to  execute  in 
practice  the  intent  and  promote  the  general  object  of 
the  donor."  The  scheme  suggested  was  substantially 
that  which  was  adopted  by  the  Supreme  Judicial  Court 
of  the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts  in  its  decree  in 
Chancery. 

The  Academy  first  applied  to  this  court  for  legal 
relief,  but  the  bill  was  dismissed,  as  the  equitable  juris- 
diction of  the  court  over  trusts  was  limited  to  "cases 
of  trust  arising  under  deeds,  wills,  or  in  the  settlement 
of  estates."  The  Academy  then  had  recourse  to  the 
Legislature  of  the  State,  which  passed  the  following 
special  Act,  approved  by  the  Governor,  March  16, 
1831:  — 

"An  Act  authorizing  the  Supreme  Judicial  Court  to  hear  and 
determine  in  equity  all  matters  relating  to  the  donation  of  Ben- 
jamin Count  Rumford  to  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and 
Sciences. 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  265 

"  Be  it  enacted  by  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representa- 
tives, in  General  Court  assembled,  and  by  the  authority  of  the 
same,  That  the  justices  of  the  Supreme  Judicial  Court  be,  and 
they  hereby  are,  authorized  and  empowered  to  hear  and  deter- 
mine in  equity  any  and  all  matters  relating  to  the  donation  of 
Benjamin  Count  Rumford  to  the  American  Academy  of  Arts 
and  Sciences,  and  to  make  all  necessary  or  proper  orders  and 
decrees  touching  the  same." 

Count  Rumford  by  his  last  will,  made  in  Paris,  had 
bequeathed  the  residue  of  his  estate  to  Harvard  College, 
for  the  purpose  of  founding  a  Professorship  to  teach  by 
lectures  and  experiments  the  utility  of  the  physical  and 
mathematical  sciences  for  the  improvement  of  the  useful 
arts  and  the  industry  and  well-being  of  society.  The 
College,  therefore,  became  a  party  to  the  hearing  of 
this  case  in  equity,  and  as  defendants  withstood  the 
prayer  of  the  Academy  for  a  legal  liberty  to  depart  from 
the  conditions  attached  to  Count  Rumford's  donation. 
The  College  claimed  that  the  objects  which  he  had  in 
view  in  his  fund  for  a  premium  intrusted  to  the 
Academy  were  substantially  included  in  and  covered 
by  the  objects  assigned  for  the  Rumford  Professorship, 
and  insisted,  cc  that  if  the  said  fund  and  the  accumula- 
tion thereof,  or  any  part  thereof,  cannot  be  appropri- 
ated and  applied  in  the  hands  of  the  said  plaintiffs  to 
the  execution  of  the  general  intent  of  said  donor  in 
making  his  said  donation  to  the  said  plaintiffs,  the 
same,  or  so  much  thereof  as  canaot  be  so  applied,  ought 
to  be  decreed  to  be  paid  over  to  these  defendants,  as 
residuary  legatees  of  said  Count  Rumford,  for  the  use 
of  the  said  Rumford  Professorship.'* 

The  case  was  fully  heard  with  arguments  of  counsel, 
and  an  application  by  the  court  of  those  principles  of 
equity  which  allow  a  modification  of  the  conditions 


266  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

attached  to  a  trust  fund  when  circumstances  prevent 
the  strict  fulfilment  of  the  terms  set  by  the  donor,  and 
which  admit  of  a  re-direction  of  the  proceeds  of  the 
fund  in  a  way  to  approximate  towards  the  ends  he  had 
in  view.  The  matter  was  then  referred  to  a  Master 
in  Chancery  "to  report  a  scheme  for  carrying  into  effect 
the  general  charitable  intent  and  purpose  of  the  donor 
conformably  to  the  prayer  of  the  plaintiffs'  bill."  His 
scheme  having  been  submitted,  it  was, 

"  By  the  court  ordered,  adjudged,  and  decreed,  for  the 
reasons  set  forth  in  the  bill,  that  the  plaintiffs  be,  and  they  are 
by  the  authority  of  this  court,  empowered  to  make  from  the 
income  of  said  fund,  as  it  now  exists,  at  any  annual  meeting  of 
the  Academy,  instead  of  biennially,  as  directed  by  said  Benja- 
min Count  Rumford,  award  of  a  gold  and  silver  medal,  being 
together  of  the  intrinsic  value  of  three  hundred  dollars,  as  a 
premium  to  the  author  of  any  important  discovery  or  useful 
improvement  on  heat  or  on  light  which  shall  have  been  made 
and  published  by  printing,  or  in  any  way  made  known  to  the 
public,  in  any  part  of  the  Continent  of  America,  or  any  of  the 
American  Islands,  preference  being  always  given  to  such  dis- 
coveries as  shall  in  the  opinion  of  the  Academy,  tend  most  to 
promote  the  good  of  mankind  ;  and  to  add  to  such  medals  as  a 
further  reward  and  premium  for  such  discovery  or  improvement, 
if  the  plaintiffs  see  fit  so  to  do,  a  sum  of  money  not  exceeding 
three  hundred  dollars. 

"  And  it  is  further  ordered,  adjudged,  and  decreed,  that  the 
plaintiffs  may  appropriate  from  time  to  time,  as  the  same  can 
advantageously  be  done,  the  residue  of  the  income  of  said  fund 
hereafter  to  be  received,  and  not  so  as  aforesaid  awarded  in 
premiums,  to  the  purchase  of  such  books  and  papers  and  philo- 
sophical apparatus  (to  be  the  property  of  said  Academy),  and  in 
making  such  publications  or  procuring  such  lectures,  experi- 
ments, or  investigations,  as  shall  in  their  opinion  best  facilitate 
and  encourage  the  making  of  discoveries  and  improvements 
which  may  merit  the  premiums  so  as  aforesaid  to  be  by  them 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  267 

awarded.  And  that  the  books,  papers,  and  apparatus  so  pur- 
chased shall  be  used,  and  such  lectures,  experiments,  and  in- 
vestigations be  delivered  and  made,  either  in  the  said  Academy 
or  elsewhere,  as  the  plaintiffs  shall  think  best  adapted  to  promote 
such  discoveries  and  improvements  as  aforesaid,  and  either  by 
the  Rumford  Professor  of  Harvard  University  or  by  any  other 
person  or  persons,  as  to  the  plaintiffs  shall  from  time  to  time 
seem  best." 

The  court  also  authorized  the  investment  of  the 
fund,  or  any  part  of  it,  in  other  first-class  securities  than 
government  bonds.1* 

It  is  easy  to  express  the  obvious  suggestion,  that  the 
enlargement  and  direction  thus  allowed  by  judicial  de- 
cision to  the  use  of  the  trust  fund  committed  by  Count 
Rumford  to  the  Academy,  for  one  specified  and  well- 
defined  object,  exceed  any  possible  construction  that 
can  be  put  upon  the  liberal  terms  of  his  deed  of  gift. 
But  it  is  just  as  easy  to  meet  the  suggestion  by  affirm- 
ing that  the  judicial  decree  has  in  view,  and  aims,  it 
may  even  be  said,  most  conscientiously  to  fulfil,  the 
intent  of  the  donor.  Under  its  decision  the  Academy 
may  make  the  munificence  of  Count  Rumford  most 
serviceable  at  the  fountain-head  and  sources  of  that 
scientific  development  which  alone  can  secure  biennially, 
or  at  longer  or  shorter  intervals,  a  signal  result  mark- 
ing a  point  in  the  flow  of  the  stream.  Books  and 
lectures  presenting  the  last  discoveries,  or  methods  for 
discovery,  in  the  Count's  favorite  subjects  of  experi- 
ment, may  be  regarded  as  even  something  better  than 
an  alternative  in  the  improvement  of  his  fund,  to  the 
use  of  it  for  a  medal  or  premium  under  the  pressure  of 
a  supposed  obligation  to  bestow  it  with  chief  reference 
to  the  lapse  of  two  years. 

*  Gray's  Reports.      Vol.  XII.  pp.  582-  602. 


268  Life  of  Co^lnt  Rumford. 

In  view  of  all  the  circumstances  and  of  the  difficulties 
which  the  case  presented,  one  may  reasonably  affirm 
that  when  the  honored  and  venerated  chief-justice 
gave  validity  to  the  decree  of  the  court,  he  might  have 
felt  the  full  assurance  that  Count  Rumford  himself 
would  have  dictated  its'  terms. 

In  the  year  1839  the  Academy  gave,  from  the  inter- 
est of  the  Rumford  Fund,  the  sum  of  six  hundred  dol- 
lars to  Dr.  Hare,  of  Philadelphia,  in  consideration  of 
his  invention  of  the  compound  ,blow-pipe  and  his 
improvements  in  galvanic  apparatus. 

The  Rumford  Medal  was  awarded  by  the  Academy, 
in  1862,  to  John  B.  Ericsson  for  his  caloric  engine.* 
In  1865  the  Medal  was  awarded  to  Daniel  Treadwell, 
former  Rumford  Professor  in  Harvard  College,  for 
improvements  in  the  management  of  heat.*}"  On  Feb- 
ruary 26,  1867,  the  Medal  was  presented  to  Alvan 
Clark  for  improvement  in  the  lens  of  the  refracting 
telescope. 

On  January  n,  1870,  the  Medal  was  presented  to 
George  H.  Corliss  for  improvements  in  the  steam- 
engine. 

The  Rumford  Fund,  in  1870,  exceeded  thirty-seven 
thousand  dollars. 

A  committee  of  the  Academy,  called  the  Rumford 
Committee,  is  chosen  annually,  who  report  upon  the 
fund  and  recommend  appropriations  from  it  for  pur- 
poses conformed  to  the  decree  of  the  court. 

*  See  Proceedings  of  the  Academy,  Vol.  VI.  p.  26. 
f  Ibid.,  Vol.  VI.  pp.  495,  497,  5'6. 


CHAPTER    VI. 

Count  Rumford  and  his  Daughter  leave  England  for  Munich. 

—  Circuitous  Route  on  Account  of  the  War.  —  The  Jour- 
ney and  its  Incidents.  —  Sarah   Thompson  s  Diary.  —  Ar- 
rival in  Munich. — Neutrality    of  Bavaria. — Munich 
threatened  by  Austrian  and  French  Armies.  —  Flight  of 
the  Elector.  —  Rumford  on  the  Council  of  the  Regency ', 
and  at  the  Head  of  the  Electoral  Army.  —  His  Signal 
Services   and   Success.  —  His    Scientific   Feeding    of  the 

•»  Q  J 

Troops.  —  Gratitude  of  the  Elector  on  his  Return.  —  Cor- 
respondence with  Sir  John  Sinclair.  —  Letters  to  Colonel 
Baldwin  and  President  Willard.  —  Private  Affairs  of  the 
Count  in  America.  —  Projected  Institution  in  Concord.  — 
Correspondence  concerning  it.  —  The  Countess  s  Court  and 
Domestic  Life.  —  Excursions.  —  Festivals.  —  Commemo- 
ration of  the  Count's  Birthday.  —  Love  Passages.  —  Va- 
riances. —  Excursions.  —  The  Count  appointed  Ambassa- 
dor to  England^  returns  there. — 'Not  received  as  such. 

—  Correspondence.  —  Honors  from    America.  —  Massa- 
chusetts Historical  Society.  —  Invitation  from  the  United 
States  Government.  —  Correspondence.  —  The  Countess  re- 
turns to  America.  —  Her  Narrative.  —  Correspondence. 

IN  this  chapter,  which  will  cover  two  more  years  of 
Count  RumforcTs  residence  in  Germany,  I  shall 
draw  largely  from  the  autobiographic  sketch  of  his 
daughter,  because  it  is  full  of  interesting  information 
concerning  his  domestic  and  private  life,  of  which  we 
know  but  little  from  any  other  sources.  We  must 


270  Life  of  Count  Ritmford. 

reconcile  as  we  may  the  ardent  expressions  of  the 
father's  affection  for  his  daughter  in  his  letters  with 
her  own  disclosures  of  the  occasional  severity  of  his 
discipline. 

It  was  in  very  hot  weather,  probably  in  the  last  of 
July  or  early  in  August,  1796,  that  they  left  England, 
compelled  to  make  a  circuitous  course  to  enter  Ger- 
many. 

The  daughter  describes  the  leave-taking  from  friends 
on  the  eve  of  quitting  London.  The  carriage  which 
the  Count  had  brought  with  him  from  Munich  being 
too  small  for  the  party,  he  was  obliged  to  procure  a 
second  one.  This,  having  belonged  to  a  duke,  still 
bore  his  arms,  and  there  was  no  time  to  allow  for  re- 
painting. The  party  arrived  at  Hamburg  on  the  third 
day,  after  a  boisterous  passage,  being  obliged  to  take 
that  route  on  account  of  the  war. 

The  armorial  bearings  on  one  of  their  carriages 
proved  to  be  a  great  annoyance  to  them,  as  visiting 
upon  them  the  tax  of  greatness.  The  Count  wished 
but  five  post-horses  to  be  attached  to  the  carriage.  The 
post-master  insisted  upon  his  starting  with  eight ;  and 
the  same  number  used  in  starting  would  be  required  at 
every  change  and  relay  along  the  route.  The  parties 
were  equally  obstinate ;  the  official  removed  the  five 
horses,  and  the  Count  and  his  valet  went  to  seek 
others,  or  redress.  Pending  the  issue,  the  daughter  was 
left  in  one  of  the  carnages,  and  her  maid  in  the  other, 
in  one  of  the  most  crowded  streets  of  Hamburg.  The 
Continent  being  then  ablaze  with  war,  this  bustling 
city  was  neutral.  The  young  lady  and  her  maid, 
Wearied,  sea-worn,  and  craving  rest  and  refreshment, 
which  could  not  easily  be  found  where  all  houses  of 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  271 

entertainment  were  thronged,  would  really  have  suffered 
had  it  not  been  for  an  adventure,  which  the  daughter 
relates  so  naively  —  with  an  intimation  that  it  might 
have  resulted  in  furnishing  her  with  a  step-mother  — 
that  it  must  be  given  in  her  own  words. 

"  A  lady,  before  whose  door  stood  one  of  our  carriages,  took 
pity  on  us,  coming  kindly  to  invite  us  in,  and,  my  father  being 
returned   at   the   time,  we    gladly  accepted.     We  were  shown 
into  cool,  delightfully  clean  rooms,  a  little  darkened  (it    being 
in  the  month  of  August  the  heat  was  intense),  and  where  we 
found  sofas,  easy-chairs,  and  plenty  of  places  to  lounge  in.      So 
great  was  the  change  from  what  we  had  before  experienced,  it 
could  be  compared  to  nothing  but  heaven  upon  earth.     After 
being  somewhat  rested  and  recovered,  then  came  refreshments 
of  everything   proper,   good,  and   enough  of  it.     Aichner  and 
my  maid  had  likewise  all  things  of  a  nature  to  comfort  them, 
and  when  nothing  else  remained  to  be  done  we  were  requested 
to  take  repose  ;  but  as  our  horses,  to  the  number  of  five,  con- 
trary to  the  post-master's  wishes,  were  to  be  at  the  door  at  a 
certain  time  we  could  not  comply.     My  father  introduced  him- 
self to  the  lady,  and  the  lady  herself  to  him.     She,  it  seemed, 
was  the  widow  of  a  German  officer,  whom,  by  reputation,  my 
father  knew  well,  and  this  leading    to    conversation,  they  got 
on  charmingly.     Both  were  well  looking,  of  proper  ages,  —  she 
the  younger,   he  not   old.     Any  one    in    the    habit  of  match- 
making,  so   called,   would    have   declared   them  made  for  each 
other.      Understanding  I  was  my  father's  daughter,  she   made 
much  of  me  ;   and  I,  far  from  having  forgotten  my  poor  mother, 
seeing  her    kindly  affected    to  me,  and   drawing  myself  nearer 
and  nearer  to  her,  seemed  to  be  in  her  arms  before  we  were 
either  of  us  aware  of  it,  —  both  of  us  shedding  tears  plentifully. 
It  came   out   that   she,   about   a  year  before,  had   lost  an  only 
daughter,  whom  she  thought  about  my  age.      She  was  the  per- 
fect mother.      My  father  began  to  make  a  motion  to  go  ;  was, 
perhaps,   not  satisfied ;    would  have   preferred    seeing    the    lady 
looking  out  for  a  second  husband.     When  we  took  leave  my 


272  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

father  told  her  that  should  he  find  himself  again  in  Hamburg, 
and  I  to  have  learned  German,  I  should  call  and  thank  her  for 
her  kindness  in  her  own  language.  We  were  both  there  again, 
but  had  forgotten  both  the  lady's  name  and  address.  Truly 
unfortunate  ! 

"  Three  weeks'  constant  travel,  circuitous  routes  to  avoid 
troops,  bad  roads,  still  worse  accommodations,  passing  nights  in 
the  carriages  for  the  want  of  an  inn,  scantiness  of  provisions, 
joined  with  great  fatigue,  rendered  our  journey  by  no  means 
agreeable.  The  Fair  at  Leipsic,  as  we  came  along  and  passed  a 
day  there,  not  being  able  to  proceed  for  the  want  of  horses  on 
account  of  it,  was  amusing.  I  bought  many  little  objects  of 
curiosity,  which  I  kept  a  long  time  in  remembrance  of  it. 

"  The  beautiful,  luxuriant  fields  of  rye  and  wheat  in  the  two 
Saxonies,  then  in  perfection,  a  short  time  before  the  reaping,  to 
any  one  accustomed  only  to  enclosed  countries,  were  striking, 
and  gave  an  idea  of  great  richness.  With  hardly  sufficient  room 
for  the  wheels  of  the  carriage,  not  a  fence,  seldom  a  tree,  still 
less  meeting  man  or  beast,  gave  a  look  to  the  country  of  real 
enchantment,  resembling  more  the  never-ending  waves  of  the 
sea  than  cultivated  land.  It  is  true,  after  a  while  you*  come  to 
a  mean,  dirty-looking  village,  of  a  nature  to  destroy  fine  illusions, 
but  where,  however,  are  to  be  seen  pretty  blue-eyed,  light- 
haired,  white-faced  women  and  children.  In  the  Saxonies  the 
German  language  is  said  to  be  the  most  purely  spoken.  In  the 
mouth  of  a  Saxon  lady  it  is  said  to  be  really  soft,  —  a  character  in 
the  general  way  it  does  not  sustain. 

"  Our  arrival  at  Munich  was  a  joyful  event,  —  an  end  to  the 
tediousness  of  the  journey,  besides  being  cheered  by  the  hand- 
some, pleasant  appearance  of  the  city.  My  father's  habitation 
merits  and  must  have  a  particular  description,  as  will  from 
thence  be  dated,  for  some  time  to  come,  most  that  relates  either  to 
him  or  myself;  and  because  the  building  was  really  magnificent 
and  equally  so  in  its  furniture,  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  mention 
by  what  good  fortune  he  became  the  occupant,  for  own  it  he  did 


not. 

cc 


It  was  an  elegant  palace,  furnished  sumptuously  some  years 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  273 

before  for  a  person  of  distinction,  who  dying,  it  was  shut  up. 
Afterwards  my  father  persuaded  the  then  reigning  Elector, 
Charles  Theodore,  to  have  it  opened  and  let  the  Russian  Am- 
bassador take  the  first  and  my  father  the  second  floor.  Through 
the  porte-cochere  passed  all  vehicles,  foot-passengers,  &c.,  by  the 
width,  possibly,  of  two  rooms,  —  those  making  part  of  the  first 
floor,  —  into  an  open  court  enclosed  by  the  building.  The  prin- 
cipal staircase —  there  being  others  —  commenced  between  the 
entrance  and  the  court,  wide  enough  for  four  abreast,  with  oak 
or  mahogany  stairs  waxed  and  rubbed,  looking  like  plate-glass. 
As  an  inhabitant  of  this  place,  where  my  father  spent  many  of 
the  most  useful  years  of  his  life,  I  propose  to  mention  it  without 
going  into  more  particulars." 

The  course  of  Miss  Sally's  narrative  must  here  be 
interrupted,  first  to  introduce  another  letter  from  her  to 
her  friend,  Mrs.  Baldwin,  and  then  to  recognize  her 
father's  valuable  service  in  the  responsible  work  for 
which  the  Elector  had  summoned  him  back  to  Munich. 

"  MUNICH,   October  16,  1796. 

ltMv  DEAR  MRS.  BALDWIN,  —  Though  this  is  the  third 
letter  that  I  have  written  you  since  I  left  America,  and  I 
have  never  received  a  line  from  you,  yet  I  cannot  refuse 
myself  the  pleasure  of  writing  you  a  few  lines  to  tell  you 
I  am  well  and  happy,  and  that  I  often  think  of  you.  I 
arrived  here  with  my  father  after  a  pleasant  journey  of  three 
weeks  and  two  days  from  London.  My  reception  here  was 
highly  flattering,  and  I  have  every  reason  to  be  pleased  and  happy 
with  my  new  situation.  This  country  is  much  more  like  America 
than  England,  and  the  climate  is  exactly  like  that  I  have  ever  been 
used  to  in  America,  so  that  I  sometimes  almost  fancy  myself  there. 
The  town  of  Munich  is  large,  clean,  and  well  built,  and  it  affords 
every  public  amusement  that  is  to  be  found  in  any  city  of  Europe. 
Be  so  good  as  to  give  my  respects  to  your  husband,  and  love  to 
the  children.  I  am,  with  real  esteem  and  friendship, 
"  Affectionately  yours, 

"SARAH  RUMFORD.'r 
18 


274  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Had  the  daughter  written  the  pages  which  have  been 
copied  at  the  date  of  the  incidents  related  in  them,  she 
would  doubtless  have  had  much  more  to  tell  us  about 
the  distractions  arid  anxieties  of  the  time  and  place  on 
her  arrival  in  Munich.  Her  father  was  for  a  few  weeks 
engrossed  and  heavily  burdened  by  the  responsibilities 
laid  upon  him  in  the  turmoil  which  then  convulsed  the 
continent  of  Europe.  Bavaria  sought  to  maintain  a 
rigid  neutrality  between  the  contending  powers  of  the 
great  revolutionary  upheaval,  and  was  therefore,  of 
course,  in  imminent  risk  of  being  scourged  by  either  or 
both  of  them.  The  immunity  with  which,  for  a  time, 
she  escaped  was  secured  to  her  by  the  wisdom  and  skill 
of  Count  Rumford,  whose  services  in  the  emergency 
were  most  gratefully  appreciated.  His  military  talent 
was  again  called  into  exercise  to  meet  a  threatening 
emergency.  General  Moreau,  after  having  crossed  the 
Rhine,  and  by  a  series  of  successes  beaten  the  various 
corps  which  had  disputed  his  passage  and  his  onward 
march,  made  an  advance  towards  Bavaria.  Count  Rum- 
ford  arrived  at  Munich  eight  days  before  the  Elector 
was  compelled  to  quit  his  residence  and  to  take  refuge 
in  Saxony.  Rumford  remained  in  the  city  with  full 
delegated  authority,  and  with  instructions  from  the 
Elector  to  watch  the  course  of  events,  and  to  act  accord- 
ing to  the  exigency  of  circumstances.  These  were  not  slow 
in  requiring  his  intervention.  After  the  battle  of  Fried- 
burg  the  Austrians,  repulsed  by  the  French,  withdrew 
to  Munich.  The  gates  of  the  city  were  shut  against 
them.  They  then  made  a  circuit,  passed  the  Iser  by 
the  bridge,  and  established  themselves  on  the  other  side 
of  the  river  on  a  height  which  commanded  the  bridge 
and  the  city.  There  they  planted  batteries,  and  anx- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  275 

iously  awaited  the  coming  up  of  the  French  forces.  In 
this  situation  some  incautious  proceedings  which  took 
place  in  Munich  were  interpreted  by  the  Austrian  gen- 
eral as  an  insult  aimed  at  himself,  and  he  demanded  the 
reason  of  the  Council  of  the  Regency,  at  the  head  of  which 
was  Rumford.  He  also  gave  the  menace  of  an  imme- 
diate attack  upon  the  city  if  a  single  Frenchman  should 
be  allowed  to  enter  it. 

At  this  critical  moment  Rumford  availed  himself  of 
the  ultimate  orders  of  the  Elector  to  take  the  chief  com- 
mand of  the  Bavarian  forces.  His  firmness  and  pres- 
ence of  mind  impressed  both  parties.  Neither  the  French 
nor  the  Austrians  entered  Munich,  and  that  city,  escap- 
ing the  direful  calamities  which  had  been  so  imminent, 
was  soon'  after  delivered  from  the  presence  of  the  hostile 
forces.  But  before,  and  while  the  danger  lasted,  Munich 
was  full  of  Bavarian  troops,  and  the  Count  did  not  for- 
get his  philosophical  and  economical v  experiments,  for 
which  he  had  new  and  emergent  occasions  and  oppor- 
tunities. The  care  of  sheltering  and  feeding  this  large 
body  of  Electoral  forces  came  upon  him,  and  he  turned 
the  task  to  the  account  of  science.  He  tells  us  in  his 
Essays  how  he  plied  his  ingenuity  in  the  processes  of 
cooking,  and  in  his  improvements  in  boilers  and  in  the 
saving  of  fuel,  to.make  the  soldiers  more  comfortable  than 
ever  they  had  been  before,  and  at  much  less  expense. 

On  the  return  of  the  Elector  he  made  the  warmest 
recognition  of  the  value  of  Rumford' s  services,  which 
exceeded  his  ability  to  reward  them.  The  Count  was 
then  placed  at  the  head  of  the  Department  of  General 
Police  in  Bavaria.  The  services  which  he  rendered  in 
this  position,  though  less  brilliant  than  his  military  re- 
forms, were  neither  less  valuable  nor  less  signal.  While 


276  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

we  resume  again  the  light  relations  given  to  us  by  the 
American  girl  about  her  court  life,  and  her  frequent 
misunderstandings  with  her  father,  we  must  think  of  him 
as  weighed  down  by  many  heavy  cares  which  might  at 
times  make  him  irritable  and  unsympathetic  with  a 
country  maiden's  fancies.  The  Count  also  at  this 
period  encountered  much  opposition  in  the  exercise  of 
his  office,  and  began  to  feel  with  some  severity  the  force 
of  the  jealousy  turned  against  him  as  a  foreigner  invested 
with  so  many  intermeddling  functions.  The  excursions 
which  were  to  his  daughter  but  the  pleasurable  incidents 
and  interchanges  of  an  unemployed  life  were  sought  for 
by  him  as  means  and  intervals  of  relief  from  over-work, 
which,  while  engaging  his  zeal  and  activity,  made  serious 
breaches  upon  his  health,  and  more  than  once  threatened 
him  with  fatal  disease. 

We  have  a  pleasing  reference  to  the  intimacy  which 
existed  between  Count  Rumford  and  that  complacent 
Scotch  cosmopolite,  Sir  John  Sinclair,  in  the  published 
correspondence  of  the  latter.  He  introduces  a  letter 
which  he  received  from  Rumford,  written  just  after  the 
temporary  subsidence  of  this  war  alarm,  with  the  follow- 
ing comment :  — 

"  From  similarity  of  pursuits  I  had  contracted  [in  London]  a 
cordial  friendship  with  Count  Rumford,  a  well-known  native  of 
America.  He  was  a  man  of  an  ardent  mind,  which  enabled  him 
to  conquer  many  difficulties  ;  and  by  his  inquiries  regarding  the 
proper  application  of  heat  he  introduced  many  useful  discoveries 
which  will  find  their  way  to  many  countries,  even  where  the 
name  of  the  inventor  may  remain  unknown. 

"  Among  a  number  of  communications  the  following  is  one 
of  the  most  important,  as  it  exhibits  the  distinguished  philosopher 
placed  at  the  head  of  an  army  in  a  foreign  country,  yet  anxious 
to  withdraw  from  active  life,  and  to  resume  the  more  pleasing 
employment  of  scientific  investigation:  — 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  277 

"MUNICH,  1 6th  October,  1756. 

"  I  thank  you,  my  dear  Sir  John,  for  your  friendly  letter, 
which  I  have  just  received.  I  am  glad  your  new  kitchen  [one 
of  which  the  Count  had  had  the  supervision]  answers  your  ex- 
pectations, and  hope  it  will  be  imitated.  I  ought  to  have  begun 
my  letter  by  acquainting  you  that  immediately  on  my  arrival 
here  from  England  I  delivered  to  the  Elector  the  diploma  you 
sent  him  [of  membership  of  an  agricultural  society],  and  that  I 
had  it  in  charge  from  his  most  Serene  Highness  to  express  to  you 
his  thanks  for  your  attentions  to  him.  He  appeared  to  me  to  be 
much  pleased  at  being  chosen  a  member  of  your  Board,  and  will, 
I  am  confident,  have  great  satisfaction  in  contributing  as  much 
as  possible  to  the  success  of  your  laudable  undertakings.  I  have 
projected  several  new  experiments,  from  the  results  of  which  I 
hope  to  get  some  new  light  with  respect  to  vegetation  and  nutri- 
tion ;  but  I  am  at  present  so  much  employed  with  business  of  a 
very  different  kind  (the  command  of  the  Bavarian  army),  that  I 
have  no  leisure  to  give  to  my  favourite  pursuits.  But  as  the 
alarms  which  were  the  occasion  of  my  being  called  upon  to  take 
the  command  in  chief  of  the  Bavarian  troops  have  subsided  since 
the  French  armies  have  left  our  neighbourhood,  I  hope  soon  to  be 
able  to  put  up  my  sword  and  resume  the  more  pleasing  occupa- 
tions of  science  and  philosophical  experiment. 

"  Wishing  you  much  success  in  your  endeavours  to  promote 
the  prosperity  of  mankind,  by  the  introduction  of  useful  improve- 
ments, I  am,  my  dear  Sir  John,  with  unfeigned  regard  and 
esteem, 

"  Your  affectionate  and  most  obedient  Servant, 

"RUMFORD. 

"  P.  S.  —  I  am  very  sorry  indeed  to  hear  you  have  withdrawn 
ydurself  from  the  c  Great  Council  of  the  Nation.'  Pray  don't 
let  yourself  be  disgusted  or  discouraged.  The  cause  is  good, 
and  perseverance  will  in  the  end  command  success." 

It  is  probable  that  if  Count  Rumford,  remaining  in 

*  The  Correspondence  of  the  Right  Hon.  Sir  John  Sinclair,  Bart.,  &c.  London. 
1831.  Vol.  II.  pp.  57-59. 


278  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

England,  and  closing  his  relations  with  Bavaria,  had 
sought  political  position  and  influence,  he  might  have 
found  a  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons,  or  even  a  subor- 
dinate office  in  the  Cabinet.  His  foreign  duties  and  his 
obligations  to  the  Elector  debarred  him,  however,  from 
many  positions  of  trust  and  honor  in  England,  while, 
as  we  shall  soon  see,  the  fact  of  his  being  a  British-born 
subject  was  a  constitutional  or  conventional  obstacle  in 
the  way  of  his  exercising  a  very  high  diplomatic  office 
which  the  Elector  had  assigned  him. 

The  following  letter  of  Colonel  Baldwin  to  Josiah 
Pierce,  half-brother  of  Count  Rumford,  concerns  the 
latter' s  kind  care  for  their  mother:  — 


•  "  WOBURN,   November   12,  1796. 

"DEAR  SIR, —  I  have  received  several  letters  from  your 
brother,  Count  Rumford,  and  his  daughter  Sally,  all  dated  at 
London.  As  one  of  the  Count's  letters  relates  principally  to 
your  mother's  concerns,  I  have  transcribed  it  and  enclose  a  copy 
thereof  for  her  perusal  [referring  to  the  letter  dated  July,  1796], 
which  you  will  please  to  deliver  to  her.  Consult  and  determine 
in  what  mode  you  would  wish  to  have  the  business  negotiated. 
If  you  were  coming  here  on  business,  you  might  bring  an  order 
from  your  mother,  drawn  agreeably  to  your  brother's  plan,  which 
you  will  see  in  the  copy  of  the  letter  herewith  transmitted.  You 
might  also  take  her  power  of  attorney,  which  would  enable  you 
to  conform  to  any  unforeseen  circumstances.  If  you  have  no 
business,  or  it  should  be  inconvenient  for  you  to  come  up,  it 
may  be  negotiated  without  your  coming  at  present.  My  atten- 
tion is  fully  occupied,  but  I  shall  not  hesitate  to  devote  sufficient 
time  to  effect  this  benevolent  design. 

"  I  do  not  know  whether  Sally  has  written  to  any  of  your  family, 
but  she  is  very  full  in  her  apologies  for  not  writing  to  more  of 
her  friends,  and  wishes  us  to  communicate  her  grateful  remem- 
brance and  love  to  her  relations  and  friends.  There  seems  an 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  279 

unbounded  love  and  affection  between  her  and  her  father  j  they 
are  delighted  with   each  other.     I    participate    in    their    happi- 


ness. 

cc 


I  wish  to  inquire  whether  it  would  be  agreeable  to  you 
to  close  the  business  in  which  we  have  been  partners,  and 
what  your  expectations  are,  and  the  proposition  you  would  wish 
to  make  for  a  settlement.  And  I  also  wish  for  your  opin- 
ion whether  I  could  settle  a  son  in  your  neighborhood  upon 
a  plan  that  would  be  flattering ;  and  if  it  is  not  too  much 
trouble,  that  you  would  state  the  objects  proper  to  direct  our 
attention  to,  and  any  circumstances  that  might  operate  against 
them. 

"  Mr.  Ingals,  the  bearer,  is  waiting.  I  have  no  time  to  enlarge. 
I  am  pleased  to  see  him  so  well.  Mrs.  Baldwin  joins  with  me 
in  respects  to  your  father  and  mother,  and  love  to  Mrs.  Pierce, 
and  compliments  to  Dr.  Thompson  and  lady,  and  all  inquiring 
friends;  and  am,  with  much  esteem,  dear  Sir, 
u  Your  obedient  Servant, 

"  LOAMMl  BALDWIN. 

"JosiAH  PIERCE,  Esq."     [Then  residing  in  Flintstown,  Me.] 

Mr.  Baldwin,  who  was  a  scrupulously  exact  man  of 
business,  found  it  necessary  to  be  very  careful  in  the 
friendly  agency  which  he  sustained  between  the  Count 
and  those  with  whom  he  had  pecuniary  transactions. 
From  a  copy  of  a  letter  addressed  by  him  to  Mrs.  Ruth 
Pierce  at  Flintstown,  which  I  hav-e  before  me,  dated 
February  2,  1797,  I  observe  that  he  asked  her  to  re- 
quest her  sons,  Josiah  and  John,  to  pay  her  the  value 
of  the  draft  out  of  some  funds  of  his  own  in  their  pos- 
session. The  reason  he  gives  for  the  request  is,  that, 
having  advanced  money  to  Sally  when  she  sailed  for 
London,  he  had  sold  the  draft  on  London  which  she  had 
given  him  in  payment,  and  that  this  had  come  back  pro- 
tested, putting  him  to  charges  for  that  and  the  loss  of 


280  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

interest.  The  purchaser  had  proposed  to  be  lenient  in 
his  exactions  if  he  could  have  as  a  substitute  the  new 
draft  in  favor  of  the  Count's  mother,  to  replace  that  of 
her  granddaughter. 

One  of  Mrs.  Pierce's  orders  upon  Mr.  Baldwin  is  as 
follows :  — 

"  FLINTSTOWN,  June  6,  1797. 

"SiR,  —  If  you  will  deliver  Mr.  Barnard  Douglass  the  bill  of 
exchange  which  my  son,  Count  Rumford,  requested  you  to  draw 
in  my  favor  for  the  year  1797,  or,  if  the  bill  is  sold,  the  pro- 
ceeds of  it,  you  will  greatly  oblige  her  who  is,  with  the  great- 
est esteem  and  respect, 

"  Yours, 

"RUTH  PIERCE." 


An  indorsement  on  the  above  reads :  — 

"BOSTON,  June  17,  1797.  Received  of  Loammi  Baldwin 
a  set  of  bills  of  exchange,  drawn  by  him  in  my  favor,  on  Sir 
Robert  Herries  &  Co.,  Bankers,  St.  James  Street,  London,  dated 
March  26,  1797,  for  the  sum  of  Thirty  Pounds  sterling,  which 
bills  I  promise  to  sell  for  the  most  they  will  sell  for,  and  deliver 
the  proceeds  of  sale  thereof  to  Mrs.  Ruth  Pierce,  agreeably  to 
the  within  order. 

«  BARNARD  DOUGLASS." 

"  Attest,  BENJ.   F.  BALDWIN." 

Here  is  a  letter  from  the  Count  to  his  friend  Bald- 
win, of  a  most  pleasing  tenor.  It  again  refers  to  the 
wish  of  the  writer  at  least  to  make  a  visit  to  his  native 
country,  and  it  relates  the  grateful  circumstances  under 
which  his  daughter  received  her  title  as  Countess,  and 
her  pension,  both  of  which  she  enjoyed  to  the  close  of 
her  life. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  281 

"MUNICH,  1 5th  Feb.,  1797. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  have  this  day  sent  under  cover  to  Mr. 
Pearson,  Secretary  to  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and 
Sciences,  a  power  of  Attorney,  authorising  you  and  Dr.  Wil- 
lard  to  transfer  5000  Dollars  American  3  per  cent  Stock,  which 
now  stands  in  my  name  in  the  Books  of  the  Treasury  of  the 
United  States,  to  the  Fellows  of  the  said  Academy.  The  loss 
of  the  original  Certificate  which  was  issued  for  this  Stock  may 
perhaps  occasion  some  delay  in  the  completion  of  this  business, 
but  I  hope  you  will  find  means  to  finish  it  without  much  trouble 
to  yourselves. 

"  As  soon  as  this  is  done,  I  shall  request  your  assistance  in 
transferring  an  equal  sum  to  my  much-loved  Mother,  to  whom 
I  am  desirous  of  giving  a  small  token  of  my  filial  affection,  and 
of  my  sincere  gratitude  for  all  her  kindness  to  me  in  the  early 
part  of  my  life. 

"  My  Daughter,  who  is  with  me,  and  who  is  the  comfort  of 
my  life,  desires  her  most  particular  compliments  to  you  and  to 
your  Lady.  She  often  mentions  your  goodness  to  her,  and 
looks  forward  with  impatience  to  the  time  when  she  hopes  to 
pay  you  a  visit  accompanied  by  her  Father. 

"  Nothing  could  afford  me  so  much  heartfelt  pleasure  as  to 
be  able  to  gratify  these  her  most  earnest  wishes,  which  are  so 
natural,  and  which  I  feel  perhaps  still  stronger  than  she  does. 
She  is  a  very  good  Girl,  and  is  much  loved  here  by  everybody 
who  knows  her. 

"  The  Elector  has  lately  made  me  very  happy  by  permitting 
me  to  resign  to  her  one  half  of  a  Pension  I  enjoyed,  which  was 
granted  to  me  several  years  ago  as  a  reward  for  my  public  ser- 
vices. Two  Thousand  Florins  a  year  (equal  to  about  two  hun- 
dred pounds  sterling)  are  secured  during  her  life  to  my  Daugh- 
ter (who  has  been  received  at  Court  as  a  Countess  of  the 
Empire).  And  this  grant  is  accompanied  by  a  circumstance 
which  renders  it  peculiarly  agreeable  to  her  and  to  me,  which  is 
that  she  may  enjoy  her  Pension  in  any  country  in  which  she 
may  choose  to  reside. 

u  She  is  now  above  want,  and  her  happiness  in  life  will  de- 


282  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

pend  on  herself.     The  best  advice  I  can  give  her  she  will  not 
fail  to  receive. 

"  I  was  happy  to  learn  that  you  are  so  busily  employed  in 
schemes  of  public  utility.  Our  juvenile  pursuits  and  our  amuse- 
ments were  always  the  same,  and  we  have  neither  of  us  any 
reason  to  complain  of  the  frowns  of  fortune. 

"  I  am,  my  Dear  Sir,  with  unalterable  Esteem, 
"  Yours  Affectionately, 

"  RUMFORD. 
"  The  Honb!e  LOAMMI  BALDWIN, 

Woburn,  near  Boston." 
("  Received  at  Boston  Post- Office,  June  10,  1797.") 

The  above  indorsement  on  this  letter,  indicating  the 
lapse  of  nearly  four  months  between  its  date  and  its 
receipt,  is  an  indication  of  the  difficulties  and  delays 
attending  transatlantic  correspondence  when  the  ocean 
and  the  land  were  the  scenes  of  revolutionary  struggles. 

Under  the  same  date  the  Count  addressed  the  follow- 
ing letter  to  President  Willard,  of  Harvard  College. 


"MUNICH,  1 5th  February,  1797. 

"  Being  charged  by  my  daughter  to  forward  to  you  the  en- 
closed letter,  I  cannot  help  adding  a  line,  to  return  you  my 
sincere  thanks  for  your  very  friendly  letter.  I  ought,  perhaps, 
at  the  same  time  to  ask  your  pardon  for  the  liberty  I  have 
taken  in  sending,  under  cover  to  Mr.  Pearson  [Prof.  Pearson 
was  then  Corresponding  Secretary  of  the  American  Academy 
of  Arts  and  Sciences],  a  power  of  attorney  to  you  and  my  friend 
Col.  Baldwin,  authorising  you  to  make  a  transfer  for  me  of 
five  thousand  dollars  .  American  three  per  cent  Stock  to  the 
American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences. 

"  I  feel  myself  highly  flattered  by  the  approbation  you  are 
pleased  to  express  of  my  Essays.  .It  has  ever  been  my  most 
ardent  wish  to  be  of  some  use  to  jnankind,  to  be  able  to  flatter 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  283 

myself  when  I  am  going  out  of  the  world  that  I  have  lived  to 
some  useful  purpose.  And  I  feel  very  grateful  to  Providence 
for  the  many  opportunities  I  have  had  of  pursuing  with  effect 
my  favorite  object.  There  are  few  persons,  I  believe,  who 
have  passed  through  a  greater  variety  of  interesting  scenes  than 
myself,  and  no  one  surely  can  feel  more  deeply,  more  intensely, 
everything  that  is  interesting  and  affecting  in  the  occurrences  of 
life. 

"  My  daughter,  who  will  never  forget  your  kindness  to  her, 
desires  me  to  present  her  best  respects.     Permit  me  to  join  with 
her  in  thanks,  and  to  assure  you  that  I  shall  never  cease  to  be, 
with  unfeigned  regard  and  esteem,  my  dear  Sir, 
"  Yours,  most  sincerely, 

"RUMFORD."* 

The  following  long  letter  of  the  Count  to  Baldwin 
will  be  found  referring  to  many  matters  of  interest, 
especially  to  some  relating  to  the  private  affairs  of  the 
writer,  and  to  certain  annoying  and  perplexing  transac- 
tions with  which  he  seems  to  have  been  embarrassed  by 
relatives  of  his  wife  and  daughter  in  America. 

"MUNICH,  1 7th  Decr.,  1797- 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  am  still  in  a  state  of  uncertainty  re- 
specting the  fate  of  a  number  of  letters  on  matters  of  importance 
to  me,  which  I  wrote  to  several  of  my  friends  in  America,  and 
among  others  to  yourself,  in  February  last.  I  have,  however, 
some  reason  to  think  that  they  arrived  safe,  and  that  the  an- 
swers to  them  were  lost  between  England  and  Hamburgh,  in 
their  way  to  Germany,  in  June  last.  An  English  packet-boat 
on  which  I  know  there  were  letters  for  me  which  had  come 
from  America,  addressed  to  the  care  of  my  Banker  in  London, 
was  taken  by  the  French  at  that  time,  and  I  think  it  more  than 
probable  that  these  were  answers  to  my  letters  of  February  last, 

*  Memorials  of  Youth  and  Manhood.     By  Sydney  Willard. 


284  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

above  mentioned.  As  soon  as  I  was  acquainted  with  the  loss 
of  these  Letters,  I  immediately  wrote  to  my  friends  in  America 
to  acquaint  them  with  that  accident,  and  to  request  them  to 
send  me  duplicates  of  their  last  letters ;  but  since  that  time 
I  have  received  no  news  whatever  from  your  side  of  the 
Atlantic. 

"  My  letters  of  February  last  related  chiefly  to  arrangements 
which  were  necessary  to  complete  the  business  relative  to  my 
donation  to  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  in 
which  business  I  had  requested  and  duly  impowered  you  to  take 
a  principal  part.  And  I  trust  you  will  have  found  means  to 
complete  those  arrangements  in  a  manner  satisfactory  to  the 
Academy.  Should  anything  more  be  necessary  to  be  done  by 
me,  you  will  be  so  good  as  to  indicate  to  me  what  is  farther 
necessary,  and  I  shall  lose  no  time  in  doing  it. 

"  I  have  now,  my  Dear  Sir,  to  request  your  friendly  assist- 
ance in  a  matter  of  a  more  private  and  confidential  nature,  and 
which  I  have  much  at  heart  to  have  properly  arranged.  Many 
years  ago  I  wrote  to  a  man  in  America,  whose  name  I  cannot 
pronounce  without  indignation,  to  desire  that  he  would  take  the 
care,  &c.,  &c. 

u  There  is  another  affair  of  a  very  interesting  nature,  at  least 
very  interesting  to  my  feelings,  in  which  it  is  in  your  power  to 
render  me  a  very  important  service.  My  Daughter  (who 
charges  me  with  her  best  compliments  for  you  and  your  Lady) 
never  ceases  her  solicitations  to  engage  me  to  pay  a  visit  to  my 
friends  in  America.  And  her  wishes  are  so  powerfully  sec- 
onded by  my  own  feelings  and  longing  desires  to  breathe  once 
more  my  native  air,  that  I  have  come  to  a  resolution  to  make 
the  journey  as  soon  as  the  restoration  of  Peace  and  the  arrange- 
ment of  my  concerns  in  this  country  will  permit  it.  If  the 
public  affairs  of  Europe  and  of  America  take  the  turn  I  ex- 
pect, and  if  no  unforeseen  event  should  happen  to  prevent  my 
carrying  my  Schemes  into  execution,  I  think  you  will  see 
us  in  America  in  15  or  16  Months  from  this  time.  In  the 
meantime,  there  are  several  private  family  concerns  which  I 
could  much  wish  might  be  arranged  and  settled  before  my 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  285 

arrival  in  America  ;  and  you  will  oblige  me  very  much  by  lend- 
ing me  your  friendly  assistance  in  that  business. 

"  Either  myself  or  my  Daughter  must  have  an  undoubted 
legal  claim  to  the  Personal  Estate  left  by  my  late  wife  at  her 
death.  But  as,  since  my  seperation  from  my  family  in  the  year 
1774,  I  have,  by  my  own  exertions,  acquired  a  sufficiency,  not 
only  for  my  own  comfortable  support  during  my  life,  but  also  to 
enable  me  to  make  a  handsome  provision  for  my  Daughter,  and 
even  to  give  her  something  to  dispose  of  by  will  to  any  of  her 
friends  to  whom  she  may  wish  to  leave  tokens  of  her  affection, 
I  have  no  wish  to  bring  forward  any  claims,  either  for  myself  or 
for  my  Daughter,  relative  to  her  Mother's  fortune,  or  to  call 
those  to  any  account  who  are  in  possession  of  it;  and  for  their 
quiet  and  security  I  am  willing  to  renounce  in  the  most  formal 
manner  all  claims  on  that  account,  and  to  engage  my  Daughter 
to  do  so.  also:  provided,  however,  and  this  is  a  condition  on 
which  I  shall  insist,  that  receipts  and  general  charges  are  signed 
on  both  sides. 

"  This  proposition  was  made,  by  my  direction,  by  my  Daugh- 
ter soon  after  my  arrival  in  England,  in  a  letter  to  her  brother, 
Mr.  Rolfe.  But  as  no  answer  has  yet  been  made  to  it,  I  am 
apprehensive  that  my  Daughter's  letter  miscarried,  or  (what  I 
should  be  very  sorry  to  be  forced  to  believe)  that  Mr.  Rolfe 
does  not  chuse  to  be  satisfied  with  this  proposal.  As  the  final 
and  irrevocable  settlement  of  this  business  is  a  matter  I  have 
much  at  heart,  I  wish  you  would  undertake  to  settle  it,  and  I 
hereby  authorise  you  to  do  so  in  mine  and  my  Daughter's  names, 
and  to  sign  in  our  behalf  whatever  may  be  necessary  to  put 
the  matter  beyond  all  possibility  of  farther  litigation  or  dispute. 
Should  it  be  necessary  for  you  to  take  a  journey  to  Concord  to 
do  this,  I  should  be  much  obliged  to  you  if  you  would  do  so, 
—  on  condition,  however,  that  you  make  the  journey  entirely 
at  my  expense. 

"  Should  any  attempt  be  made  by  Mr.  Rolfe  to  bring  forward 
any  demands  for  maintenance,  £sV.,  you  will,  I  trust,  without 
much  difficulty,  be  able  to  make  him  feel  how  very  unjust  and 
improper  such  pretensions  would  be  under  any  imaginable  cir:um- 


286  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

stances,  but  especially  after  the  very  generous  offers  that  have 
been  made  to  him.  Should,  however,  such  demands  be  not 
only  made,  but  insisted  on,  you  will  please  to  declare  in  my 
name,  not  only  that  they  will  never  be  admitted,  but  also  that 
the  offer  already  made  will  be  revoked,  and  other  measures  pur- 
sued. You  may  also,  in  that  case,  give  Mr.  Rolfe  to  under- 
stand, at  parting,  that  I  shall  take  care  that  his  Sister,  in  the 
Will  I  have  enabled  her  to  make,  shall  not  forget  his  usage  of 
her.  Should  he  behave  handsomely  in  this  business,  you  will, 
of  course,  avoid  saying  anything  to  him  that  would  wound  his 
feelings.  I  should  never  have  had  any  suspicions  of  his  be- 
having otherwise  than  handsomely,  had  it  not  been  for  a  speci- 
men of  his  manner  of  making  up  accounts  which  I  saw  among 
the  papers  my  Daughter  brought  with  her  from  America,  and 
from  the  circumstance  of  his  never  having  answered  any  of  her 
letters.  Though  my  Daughter  is  quite  willing  to  renounce  all 
pretensions  to  her  mother's  fortune,  yet  she  is  naturally  desirous 
to  have  something  that  belonged  to  her  to  keep  in  remembrance 
of  her,  —  a  string  of  beads,  a  ring,  or  something  of  that  kind, — 
and  she  desires  that  you  and  her  Brother  would  select  some 
article  of  this  sort  for  this  purpose. 

"  There  is  another  concern  which  my  Daughter  requests  that 
you  would  settle  for  her  at  Concord.  Her  Grandfather  Walker 
left  her  a  legacy  in  his  Will  which  has  not  yet  been  paid.  She 
desires  you  would  apply  to  her  Uncle,  the  Hon.  Judge  Walker, 
from  whom  she  is  to  receive  this  Legacy,  for  his  note  of  hand, 
on  interest  for  the  amount  of  it  ;  and  for  the  interest  upon  it 
since  it  became  due,  from  the  i8th  October,  1792,  when  she 
compleated  her  eighteenth  year.  You  may  at  the  same  time 
acquaint  Judge  Walker,  that,  in  case  of  my  Daughter's  death, 
this  money  will  (according  to  the  dispositions  of  her  last  Will 
and  Testament)  return  to  the  family  from  which  she  received 
it.  In  the  meantime,  she  very  naturally  wishes  that  this  prop- 
erty might  be  properly  secured  to  her,  and  that  it  might  be  on 
interest. 

"  There  is  another  pecuniary  affair  which  I  should  be 
obliged  to  you  if  you  would  settle  for  myself  with  Mr. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  287 

Walker.  He  has,  for  these  last  twenty  years  at  least,  paid 
the  Taxes,  on  my  behalf,  for  four  shares  (or  perhaps  they 
may  be  six)  which  belong  to  me  in  a  new  Township,  called 
Pennicook,  lying  somewhere  near  Saco  river.  Will  you  be 
so  good  as  to  repay  him  these  advances,  with  the  inter- 
est, &c. 

"  I  wish  you  would  also  make  inquiries  respecting  the  quan- 
tity, quality,  situation,  and  value  of  these  lands,  and  let  me 
know  whether  it  would  be  most  advisable  for  me  to  keep  them 
or  to  part  with  them.  , 

u  There  is  still  one  more  commission  with  which  we  are 
desirous  of  troubling  you  ;  and  though  it  is  rather  of  an  un- 
common nature,  and  may  be  attended  with  some  embarrass- 
ment, we  cannot  help  flattering  ourselves  that  you  will  under- 
take it.  I  must  introduce  it  by  an  account  of  a  little  event 
which  gave  rise  to  the  idea  of  the  undertaking,  in  the  execution 
of  which  we  shall  request  your  assistance.  . 

"  In  March  last  my  Daughter,  desirous  of  celebrating  my 
birth-day  in  a  manner  which  she  thought  would  be  pleasing  to 
me,  went  privately  to  the  House  of  Industry,  and,  choosing  out 
half  a  dozen  of  the  most  industrious  of  the  little  Boys  of  8 
and  10  years  of  age,  and  as  many  Girls,  dressed  them  new, 
from  hand  to  foot,  in  the  uniform  of  that  public  Establishment 
at  her  own  expence,  and,  dressing  herself  in  white,  early  in  the 
morning  of  my  birth-day,  led  them  into  my  room  and  presented 
them  to  me  when  I  was  at  breakfast. 

"  I  was  so  much  affected  by  this  proof  of  her  affection  for 
me,  and  by  the  lively  pleasure  that  she  enjoyed  in  it,  that  I 
resolved  that  it  should  not  be  forgotten ;  and  immediately 
formed  a  scheme  for  perpetuating  the  remembrance  of  it,  and 
often  renewing  the  pleasure  the  recollection  of  it  must  afford 
her.  I  made  her  a  present  of  2000  Dollars  American  three 
per  cent  Stock,  on  the  express  condition  that  she  should  appro- 
priate it  In  her  Will,  as  a  capital  for  clothing  every  year,  forever, 
on  her  birth-day,  twelve  poor  and  industrious  Children,  namely, 
6  Girls,  and  6  Boys,  each  of  them  to  be  furnished  with  a  com- 
plete suit  of  new  clothing,  of  the  value  of  five  Dollars,  made 


288  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

up  in  the  same  form  and  colours  as  the  uniforms  of  the  poor 
children  she  clothed  on  my  birthday. 

"  To  complete  this  arrangement  it  was  necessary  to  deter- 
mine who  should  be  the  objects  of  this  charitable  foundation, 
and  it  gave  me  much  satisfaction  to  find  that  my  Daughter  did 
not  hesitate  a  moment  in  making  her  option.  She  immediately 
expressed  her  wishes  that  it  might  be  the  poor  children  of  the 
Town  where  she  was  born, — a  spot  which  will  ever  be  very 
dear  to  her,  and  where  she  is  anxious  to  be  remembered  with 
kindness  and  affection. 

"  Though  the  inhabitants  of  the  Town  of  Concord  are  too 
rich,  and  have,  fortunately,  too  small  a  number  of  objects  of 
charity,  to  stand  in  need  of  such  a  donation  as  that  which  my 
Daughter  is  desirous  of  their  accepting  at  her  hands,  yet,  as 
the  object  she  has  principally  in  view  —  the  encouragement  qf 
Industry  among  the  children  of  the  most  indigent  classes  of 
society  —  must  meet  the  approbation  of  all  good  and  wise  men, 
she  cannot  help  flattering  herself  that  the  Town  of  Concord 
will  do  her  the  favour  and  the  honour  to  accept  of  this  donation 
for  the  purpose  stipulated,  and  that  either  the  Selectman  of  the 
Town,  or  the  Overseers  of  the  Poor,  for  the  time  being,  will 
take  the  trouble  annually,  of  seeing  that  the  conditions  of  it  are 
fulfilled. 

"  What  I  have  to  request  of  you,  my  Dear  Sir,  is,  that  you 
would  mention  this  matter  to  some  of  the  principal  Inhabitants 
of  Concord,  and  endeavour  to  obtain  their  approbation  of  the 
scheme  and  a  promise  of  their  support  of  it,  and  their  assistance 
in  carrying  it  into  execution.  As  soon  as  I  shall  be  informed 
by  you  that  our  Plan  meets  with  their  approbation,  my  Daugh- 
ter will  make  an  application  to  them  in  a  more  direct  and  formal 
manner ;  and  I  hereby  engage  to  be  her  surety  for  the  punctual 
performance  of  all  that  she  may  promise  in  the  progress  of  this 
business. 

"  I  shall  hasten  to  conclude  this  long  epistle  by  requesting 
that  you  would  excuse  the  liberty  I  take  in  giving  you  so  much 
trouble  with  my  affairs,  and  that  you  would  rest  assured  that  I 
shall  not  fail  to  embrace  with  eagerness  every  opportunity  that 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  289 

shall  offer  of  giving  you  the  most  convincing  proofs  of  my  grati- 
tude, as  well  as  of  the  unfeigned  regard  and  esteem  with  which 
I  am,  my  dear  Friend, 

"  Most  affectionately  Yours, 

"RUMFORD. 

"  The  Honb!e  Col.  LOAMMI  BALDWIN. 
("Received  April  21,  1798.") 

This  "  long  epistle,"  as  the  Count  well  describes  it, 
can  hardly  have  failed  to  engage  the  attention  of  the 
reader  as  giving  hints  and  intimations  of  some  of  those 
traits  in  the  writer  which  express  his  real  character.  He 
evidently  cherished  a  serious  intention  of  at  least  mak- 
ing a  visit  with  his  daughter  to  his  native  country,  if 
not  also  of  taking  up  his  permanent  residence  here. 
His  fame  was  now  well  established  in  America,  and 
many  friends  and  correspondents  whom  he  had  here 
were  prepared  to  welcome  him  with  pride  and  gratitude. 
I  have  come  upon  many  contemporary  evidences  that 
several  of  these  friends  were  engaged  in  selecting  for 
him  a  desirable  estate,  which  he  might  purchase  and 
improve,  and  had  written  to  him  very  freely  upon  the 
subject.  It  was  just  at  a  period  when  some  of  the 
most  extensive  private  domains  were  purchased  at  small 
cost  by  gentlemen  rich  for  those  days,  who  built  upon 
them  substantial  mansion-houses,  and  introduced  some 
of  the  earlier  improvements  of  agriculture.  Count 
Rumford  would  have  been  a  conspicuous  example 
among  this  class,  and  would  surely  have  signalized 
his  renewed  citizenship  in  Massachusetts  by  building  a 
stately  mansion,  adorning  pleasure-grounds,  and  man- 
aging a  farm.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  region  which 
drew  the  preferences  of  his  friends  and  advisers  was  in 
the  neighborhood  lying  between  what  are  now  known 
as  North  Cambridge  and  Belmont. 
19 


290  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

But  before  finally  committing  himself  even  to  a  tem- 
porary visit  to  the  scenes  and  companions  of  his  early 
years,  Count  Rumford,  with  that  deliberate  and  cau- 
tious wisdom  of  providing  conveniences  and  safeguards 
for  his  plans  which  was  habitual  with  him,  determined 
to  have  all  seeming  difficulties  and  embarrassments  re- 
moved or  disposed  of.  He  was  still  a  proscribed  and 
outlawed  exile,  alike  by  the  laws  of  Massachusetts  and 
of  New  Hampshire ;  and  the  general  government  had 
no  power  to  remove  these  disabilities,  even  had  it 
sought  to  do  so.  His  return  and  residence  here  could 
only  have  been  by  sufferance,  but  his  eminence  attained 
abroad  would  be  expected  to  secure  him  immunity 
from  slight  or  insult.  The  inhabitants  of  Woburn, 
not  to  be  behind  the  State  or  any  of  its  municipalities, 
had  voted  in  town  meeting,  May  12,  1783,  "that  the 
absentees  and  conspirators,  or  refugees,  ought  never 
to  be  suffered  to  return,  but  be  excluded  from  having 
lot  or  portion  among  us."  Nor  could  he  legally,  as 
an  alien,  hold  real  estate  within  our  territory.  As  we 
have  already  seen,  he  had  previously  inquired  of  his 
friend  Baldwin  whether  he  might  safely  venture  to 
return,  and  whether  "  party  spirit  "  was  at  all  abated. 
He  would  have  found  at  work  here  at  that  time  a 
party  spirit  of  the  most  intense  and  virulent  character, 
though  it  concerned  other  issues  than  those  in  which  he 
had  been  involved. 

The  same  local  legislation  which  outlawed  him  had 
also  deprived  him  of  all  property  rights  and  claims  on 
this  soil.  His  references  to  such  claims  as  still  valid 
must  be  interpreted  accordingly.  The  patriotic  posi- 
tion which  the  members  of  his  family  and  that  of  his 

*  Sewall's  History. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  291 

wife  had  taken  and  maintained  when  he  fled  the  coun- 
try secured  to  them,  of  course,  the  property  in  which 
he  otherwise  would  have  had  an  interest.  At  no  sub- 
sequent period  could  he  have  interfered  in  its  manage- 
ment, or  disposed  of,  or  advised  the  disposal  of,  any 
part  of  it,  except  by  the  same  sufferance  from  those 
immediately  concerned,  who  would  have  winked  at  his 
presence  in  this  country.  The  property  of  his  deceased 
wife,  having  come  for  the  most  part  from  her  former 
husband,  Colonel  Rolfe,  would  mainly  go  to  her  son 
by  him,  Paul  Rolfe.  A  portion  of  the  widow's  dower, 
which  she  had  enjoyed  as  Mrs.  Thompson,  would 
legally  descend  to  the  Count's  daughter  by  her.  But 
it  would  seem  that  while  her  inheritance  of  this  was  in 
some  way  impeded,  the  Count  had  reason  to  apprehend 
that  he  might  be  made  independently  answerable  for  the 
charges  of  his  daughter's  maintenance  and  education 
during  the  years  in  which  her  father  had  apparently 
left  her  to  the  care  of  others.  The  disrepute  attached 
to  his  own  name  in  Concord  till  he  had  won  for  it 
eminent  distinction,  would  allow  of  irregularity  and 
even  of  injustice  in  the  transactions  of  administrators 
and  guardians.  As  to  the  cc  man  in  America  "  whose 
name,  as  the  Count  wrote  to  Colonel  Baldwin,  he 
"could  not  pronounce  without  indignation,"  it  is 
hardly  worth  our  while  to  inquire.  Yet  I  think  I 
might  name  him,  though  I  should  be  unwilling  to 
justify  any  charge  thus  implied  against  him.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  the  Count's  incidental  assertion  that 
he  had  written  to  this  man  cc  many  years  ago."  The 
period  designated  is  indefinite,  but  it  must  suggest  a 
date  of  the  Count's  intercourse  by  correspondence  with 
some  one  near  his  early  home  previous  to  any  letter 


292  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

which  I  have  been  able  to  obtain.  The  Count  shows 
his  willingness  to  renounce,  even  on  his  daughter's  be- 
half, all  claims  which  she  or  he  might  have  upon  the 
estate  of  his  deceased  wife,  and  he  assumes  the  whole 
responsibility  of  her  maintenance  henceforward,  and  of 
provision  for  her  survival ;  covenanting,  however,  as  a 
condition,  that  no  charges  for  the  past  should  be  set  up 
against  him  or  her.  This  requisition  he  enforces  with 
a  threat  concerning  last  wills  and  testaments  to  be 
insured  by  a  foreign  sanction.  Miss  Sarah's  Grand- 
father Walker  had  left  her  a  legacy  of  £  140  when  she 
should  be  married,  or  be  eighteen  years  of  age.  On 
this  the  Count  had  computed  interest  from  the  com- 
pletion of  her  eighteenth  year  up  to  the  time  of  his 
writing.  This  he  required  for  her,  with  a  generous 
stipulation  that  it  should  revert  at  her  decease  to  the 
Walker  family.  He  tenderly  demands  for  her  also 
some  keepsake  of  affection,  if  it  be  but  "  a  string  of 
beads,"  of  the  lonely  mother  whom  she  had  loved. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  parties  concerned 
made  no  serious  effort  in  reference  to  the  Count's  in- 
validated rights  to  the  shares  in  some  wild  land  in 
Maine. 

A  lively  account  will  be  found  further  on,  from  the 
daughter's  pen,  of  the  celebration  of  her  father's  birth- 
day which  suggested  to  him  the  proposition  submitted 
to  the  selectmen  of  Concord.  The  Count  did  not  ex- 
ercise his  usual  discretion,  and  seems  to  have  become 
wellnigh  oblivious  of  the  characteristics  of  his  native 
land,  when  he  suggested  the  introduction  here  of  one 
of  the  most  odious  customs  of  the  Old  World,  in  associ- 
ating a  grotesque  pauper  uniform  with  a  beneficiary 
institution.  Children  so  disfigured  in  their  array  would 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  293 

have  been  a  ridiculous  spectacle  in  a  New  England 
country  town,  and  their  garb,  which  would  have  made 
them  a  jeer,  would  have  been  a  severer  infliction  than 
their  poverty. 

The  matters  referred  to  in  the  long  epistle  are  recog- 
nized in  the  correspondence  which  follows. 

"WOBURN,  March  26,  1798. 

"  MY  DEAR  COUNT, —  I  have  been  waiting  in  expectation, 
from  time  to  time,  that  I  should  soon  have  it  in  my  power  to 
announce  to  you  the  full  and  complete  negotiation  of  your  most 
liberal  donation  to  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences, 
which  has  been  delayed  the  longer  as  we  did  not  very  readily 
find  the  precise  mode  of  making  the  transfer  where  the  original 
certificates  (as  in  this  case)  were  lost.  However,  the  business 
is  finally  completed,  and  the  Academy  is  in  the  full  possession  of 
your  generous  donation  of  five  thousand  dollars,  three  per  cent 
Stock  of  the  United  States,  —  a  donation  the  most  liberal  and  im- 
portant of  any  that  this  Society  has  ever  realized.  And  notwith- 
standing you  may  not  have  heard  (as  you  might  justly  expect) 
much  from  us  during  the  transfer,  yet  I  do  assure  you  that  this 
event  has  not  been  marked  with  silence  here. 

"  There  is  a  committee  of  the  Academy  appointed  to  address 
you  upon  this  pleasing  occasion,  and  I  hope  erelong  we  shall 
have  the  renewed  pleasure  of  transmitting  to  you  some  fruits 
of  your  solicitous  endeavors  to  investigate  a  subject  so  difficult, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  so  important  to  mankind.  It  rather 
seems  a  mystery  that  the  philosophy  of  Fire  and  Light,  the 
most  effulgent  agents  in  nature,  should  be  the  most  difficult  to 
see  into  and  investigate. 

"  Your  much  esteemed  Essays  are  now  republishing  by  Mr. 
David  West,  of  Boston.  This  book,  besides  the  great  utility 
of  the  various  subjects  it  treats  of,  is  highly  valued  for  the  style 
in  which  it  is  written,  and  has  been  recommended  by  some  of 
our  professors  in  languages  as  the  best  sample  for  imitation  of 
any  extant. 


294  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  I  have  now  only  to  add  my  love  to  your  daughter,  the 
Countess,  to  whom  Mrs.  Baldwin  has  just  written,  and  close 
at  this  time  with  that  sentiment  I  have  so  often  expressed,  with- 
out which  I  don't  know  that  I  shall  ever  conclude  another  letter 
until  the  object  (which  is  to  see  you  once  more  in  your  native 
country)  is  obtained. 

"  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  with  great  respect,  my  dear  Count, 
"  Your  obedient  and  very  humble  servant, 

"LOAMMI   BALDWIN. 

"SiR  BENJAMIN,  Count  of  Rumford." 

"The  above  letter  to  be  forwarded  by  Dr.  Welsh's  son, 
of  Boston,  who  is  going  to  Berlin,  as  Secretary  to  Mr.  Adams, 
the  American  Minister  at  that  Court. 

("Sealed  up,  July  30,  1798.") 

Considering  the  punctilious  character,  especially  in 
all  business  affairs,  both  of  Count  Rumford  and  of 
Colonel  Baldwin,  it  must  have  been  a  grievous  vexa- 
tion to  them  that,  besides  the  delays  connected  with  the 
transmission  of  letters,  there  should  have  happened  a 
protest  of  a  note  drawn  by  the  Countess  for  the  benefit 
of  his  mother,  as  this  letter  indicates. 

"MUNICH,  yth  January,  1798. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  By  some  unaccountable  delay,  your  letter  of 
the  5th  Dec!,  1796,  did  not  reach  me  till  a  few  days  ago.  My 
Bankers  in  London,  Sir  Robert  Herries  &  Co.,  of  St.  James' 
St.,  have  directed  their  Correspondent  in  Boston  (whose  name 
you  will  be  made  acquainted  with)  to  pay  you  the  amount  of 
the  Bill  of  Exchange  drawn  by  my  Daughter  on  my  late  Agent 
in  London,  Capt.  Armstrong,  for  £30  sterling,  dated  Boston, 
October  23d,  1795,  together  with  the  Costs  arising  from  the 
protest  of  that  Bill,  Interest,  &c.,  which  altogether  amounted 
to  £32.  5.  9.  sterling,  according  to  the  account  you  have  trans- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  295 

mitted  to  me  in  your  letter  above  mentioned,  of  the  5th  Deer, 
1798,  which,  together  with  the  interest  on  the  same  since  that 
time,  you  will  now  receive. 

a  I  am,  Sir,  Your  most  Obedient  Servant, 

"RUMFORD.   - 
"  The  Honb!e  LOAMMI  BALDWIN, 
u  Senator,  &c.  Woburn,  near  Boston, 

Massachusetts. 
"  North  America." 

It  must  have  been  with  some  misgivings  of  his  own 
that  Colonel  Baldwin,  in  the  following  letter,  commu- 
nicated to  the  Selectmen  of  Concord,  N.  H.,  the  prop- 
osition concerning  a  charitable  institution. 

"  WOBURN,  24th  September,  1798. 

"  GENTLEMEN,  —  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson,  Count  of  Rum- 
ford,  and  his  daughter,  the  Countess  of  Rumford,  now  at 
Munich  in  Bavaria,  have  made  provision  for  establishing  a  fund 
of  two  thousand  dollars,  three  per  cent  Stock  of  the  United 
States,  the  income  whereof  is  to  be  appropriated  to  clothe  annu- 
ally in  the  uniform  of  the  House  of  Industry  at  Munich,  on  the 
23d  of  October,  forever,  twelve  poor  and  industrious  children 
of  the  town  of  Concord,  being  the  place  of  his  daughter's  birth, 
a  spot  dear  to  her,  and  where  she  is  anxious  to  be  remembered 
with  kindness  and  affection. 

"  The  Count  seems  well  apprised  of  the  flourishing  state  of 
your  town,  that  it  is  above  the  need  of  his  assistance.  Yet,  as 
the  encouragement  of  industry  seems  a  principal  object  with 
him,  they  hope  that  the  scheme  will  meet  your  approbation, 
In  a  letter  which  I  received  from  the  Count,  dated  the  i;th 
December,  1797,  wherein  this  plan  of  the  institution  was  pro- 
posed, is  a  paragraph  to  the  following  effect  :  — 

"'  Though  the  inhabitants  ....  of  it  are  fulfilled/ 

"There  is  also  in  the  same  letter  a  closing  paragraph,  which 
is  as  follows,  namely  :  — 

"  '  What  I  have  to  request  ....  this  business.' 


296  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  I  hope  the  foregoing  sketches  will  be  sufficient  to  give  you 
the  outlines  of  this  plan.  I  have  had  conversation  with  several 
gentlemen  of  the  town  of  Concord  upon  the  same  business,  who 
will  perhaps  be  able  to  give  further  information  respecting  the 
matter;  particularly  I  beg  leave  to  refer  you  to  the  Hon.  Judge 
Walker,  to  whom  I  have  communicated  the  contents  of  the 
letter  which  I  have  received  upon  this  subject  from  the  Count. 

"When  I  contemplate  the  many,  the  very  many,  important 
improvements,  institutions,  and  establishments  the  Count  has 
made,  which  go  directly  to  meliorate  the  condition  of  mankind, 
I  am  led,  with  grateful  pleasure,  to  bless  his  name,  and  glory  in 
our  country  which  gave  him  birth.  And  I  should  rest  in  full 
confidence  that  your  proceedings  and  report  in  this  concern  will 
be  such  as  will  aid  his  usefulness  and  extend  his  benevolence  in 
the  world. 

"  I  have  all  along  intended  to  wait  on  you  in  person  with  the 
Count's  proposals,  but  have  hitherto  been  disappointed,  and  now 
despair  of  having  that  pleasure  this  season ;  and  so  much  time 
has  elapsed  since  I  received  them  that  I  have  now  only  to  re- 
quest that  your  consideration  and  decision  in  the  premises  may 
be  as  speedy  as  their  nature  and  your  convenience  will  admit, 
and  shall  wait  your  advice. 

"  I  am,  with  the  greatest  consideration  and  respect,  gentlemen, 
"  Your  most  obedient  servant, 

"LOAMMI   BALDWIN. 

"  THE  GENTLEMEN,  SELECTMEN  OF  THE  TOWN  OF  CONCORD, 
N.  Hampshire." 

The  occasion  which  prompted  this  intended  pro- 
vision for  some  poor  children  in  Concord,  and  the 
form  which  was  proposed  for  it,  will  be  found,  as  before 
intimated,  to  be  explained  by  and  by  in  the  daughter's 
autobiography.  The  true  spirit  of  New  England  inde- 
pendence and  pride,  still  with  an  eye  open  to  worldly 
thrift,  and  a  consciousness  that  money  received  in  one 
way  or  for  one  object  which  would  be  objectionable 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  297 

may  still  be  made  available  in  another  way  and  for 
another  object,  is  to  be  observed  in  the  following  reply 
of  the  selectmen  to  Count  Rumford,  through  Colonel 
Baldwin.  They  will  be  very  glad  to  receive  the  money 
proffered  by  him  and  his  daughter,  and  though  they 
dislike  the  conditions  prescribed  for  the  gift,  and  freely 
express  their  objections,  they  will  manage  in  some 
manner  to  accept  them,  rather  than  lose  the  money, 
offering,  meanwhile,  an  opportunity  for  the  modification 
of  the  terms. 

"CONCORD,  N.  H.,  Nov.  17,  1798. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  In  your  obliging  letter  of  the  24th  Sept., 
which  we  had  the  honor  to  receive,  we  find  stated  a  plan  of 
an  Institution,  proposed  by  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson,  Count 
of  Rumford,  and  his  daughter,  the  Countess  of  Rumford,  for 
establishing  a  fund  of  two  thousand  dollars,  3  per  cent  stock  of 
the  United  States,  the  income  of  which  is  to  be  appropriated  to 
clothe,  annually,  in  the  uniform  of  the  House  of  Industry  at 
Munich,  twelve  poor,  industrious  children  of  the  town  of 
Concord,  and  the  same  to  continue  in  perpetuam. 

"Having  attentively  considered  the* proposals  of  the  Count 
and  his  daughter,  we,  as  a  committee,  in  behalf  of  the  town 
of  Concord,  request  the  favor  of  you,  sir,  to  communicate  to 
them  the  following,  viz.  :  — 

"  That  the  object  under  consideration,  to  wit,  the  encourage- 
ment to  industry,  appears  to  us  important,  and  meets  the  appro- 
bation of  every  good  and  enlightened  citizen ;  but  that  the 
means  proposed  to  be  used  for  the  accomplishment  of  that 
object  will  have  the  desired  effect  is  with  us  a  doubt. 
Whether  the  clothing  of  these  twelve  children,  which  to 
them  will  be  temporary,  or  minds  well  informed  in  useful 
knowledge,  which  will  be  durable,  and  of  which  none  can 
deprive  them,  will  be  most  likely  to  effectuate  so  noble  and 
benevolent  a  design,  are  questions  which  we  beg  leave  to  submit 
to  their  judicious  consideration. 


298  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

u  That  although  a  spirit  of  industry  may  be  excited  in  children 
by  holding  up  to  them  the  idea  of  clothing,  and  that  from  that 
clothing  a  temporary  comfort  will  indeed  arise,  yet  we  humbly 
conceive  that  by  furnishing  them  with  the  means  of  acquiring 
moral  and  political  knowledge  they  might  be  equally  excited, 
and,  should  their  proficiency  be  good,  —  which,  from  observing 
the  general  desire  after  knowledge  among  our  youth,  we  do  not 
doubt,  —  it  would  not  only  afford  them  present  comfort,  but  will 
directly  tend  to  meliorate  their  several  conditions  in  this  life, 
will  prepare  them  more  fully  to  enjoy  the  blessings  of  civil  and 
religious  liberty,  and  induce  them,  as  they  rise  into  active  life, 
more  cordially  to  bless  the  memory  of  their  munificent  bene- 
factress. 

"  Whichsoever  may  appear  most  effectual  in  bringing  about 
the  object  of  the  Institution,  we  beg  leave  of  you,  sir,  to 
inform  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson,  Count  of  Rumford,  and  his 
daughter,  the  Countess  of  Rumford,  that  we  will,  with  grateful 
hearts,  accept  the  donation  for  the  stipulated  design,  and  that 
we  shall  with  the  greatest  pleasure  exert  our  united  influence 
to  aid  them  in  the  accomplishment  of  so  important  and  benevo- 
lent a  purpose, 

"  We  are,  sir,  most  respectfully  yours, 

"JOHN    ODLIN,       |Selectme" 
RICHARD  AYER,  }  r  c 

'     Concord. 

"  HON.  LOAMMI  BALDWIN,  Woburn,  Mass." 

No  further  steps  were  taken  during  the  lifetime  of 
the  Count  in  reference  to  this  proposition.  His  daugh- 
ter cherished  through  her  life  the  purpose  of  sub- 
stantially carrying  into  effect  the  original  design  of  her 
father,  or  of  establishing  some  equivalent  substitute  for 
it.  She  accordingly  made  a  provision  in  her  will,  very 
generous  in  its  terms,  though  it  still  waits  for  full 
realization  in  a  philanthropic  institution.  Mention 
will  be  made  of  this  in  its  proper  place.  I  now  re- 
sume her  narrative. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  299 

tc  The  amusements  were  refined,  from  their  being  at  court. 
The  Elector,  at  the  age  of  seventy-one,  having  married  an 
Italian  princess  of  seventeen,  it  gave  rise  to  a  joke  that  it  was 
only  the  numbers  reversed.  Unfortunately  it  proved  more  than 
simply  a  reversement  of  numbers.  The  Electrice,  besides  being 
accomplished  and  handsome,  intense  in  her  love  for  and  inde- 
fatigable in  the  pursuit  of  amusement,  contrasted  greatly  with 
the  Elector's  years,  his  want  of  rest  and  quiet.  But  on  account 
of  the  beautiful,  spirited  princess,  all  was  gayety.  Bails  suc- 
ceeding balls  ;  drawing-rooms,  concerts,  the  same.  The  splen- 
did palace  of  Nymphenbourg,  the  summer  court  residence,  be- 
came the  seat  of  hilarity,  fashion,  and  elegance.  The  young 
Electrice  figured  at  the  head  of  it,  singing  agreeably,  often 
performing  in  public,  and  dancing  well,  though  a  little  lame. 
It  was  amusing  to  bystanders  to  be  witnesses  to  the  conjugal 
struggles  ;  the  Elector  looking  steadfastly  to  the  door,  impatient 
for  the  moment  to  arrive  to  retire,  and  she,  in  the  supplicating, 
artful  manner  of  youth,  saying,  c  One  dance  more  !  One  dance 
more  !  ' 

"  The  German  ladies,  in  general,  are  accomplished  and 
charming,  vying  with  Parisieners,  yet  less  celebrated  ;  possess- 
ing the  more  substantial  qualities  of  the  English,  those  of  sin- 
cerity. The  German  gentlemen  are  profound  in  knowledge, 
strict  in  probity,  with  not  a  shadow  of  conceit  or  foppery,  with 
perfect  high-breeding.  Undoubtedly  this  is  why  their  seminaries 
of  learning  are  so  esteemed  and  sought  after.  It  is  not  in  these 
schools  that  a  child  would  be  taught  duplicity,  or  independent 
rudeness  of  manners,  as  in  many  others.  But  at  this  moment 
the  word  was  Reform.  The  effects  of  the  French  Revolution, 
the  great  upsetter  of  everything,  were  then  felt,  though  now, 
fortunately,  it  is  at  an  end,  and  the  scales  of  justice,  wisdom, 
and  good  order  have  resumed  their  activity. 

"  I  do  not  wish  to  cast  blame  on  my  father,  persuaded  that 
in  what  he  did,  it  being  according  to  the  customs  of  the  times, 
he  considered  it  doing  right.  He  was  besides  upheld  by  the 
kindness  of  the  Elector,  as  well  as  allowed  by  him  the  means0 
He  seemed  to  be  a  real  favorite  of  the  Elector's,  and  on  his  side 


300  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

he  was  unfeignedly  attached  to  him.  Indeed,  I  presume  the 
Elector  was  a  really  good,  excellent  character.  An  anecdote  is 
related  of  him  in  connection  with  my  father,  which  shows  him 
to  be  such,  besides  indulgent.  In  some  transaction,  my  father 
being  blamed,  the  Elector  took  his  part.  My  father  afterwards, 
finding  that  he  had  really  been  to  blame,  went  not  only  to  thank 
the  Elector,  but  to  own  his  fault.  The  Elector  replied,  'If 
you  had  been  in  the  wrong  ten  times,  I  would  have  insisted  on 
the  contrary  !  ' 

"  From  a  change  of  times  and  politics,  the  poorhouse,  with 
some  other  institutions,  I  presume,  have  not  been  kept  up. 
But  the  Duke  of  Deux  Fonts,  successor  to  the  Elector,  —  he 
who  afterwards,  much  against  his  inclinations,  esteeming  much 
more  the  title  of  Elector,  was  made  King  by  Bonaparte,  — 
was  so  kind  as  not  to  suffer  my  father's  English  Garden,  or, 
rather,  the  one  built  under  his  care,  to  fall  into  dilapidation. 
This  garden,  about  seven  and  a  half  miles  in  circumference,  has 
two  branches  of  the  Iser  running  through  it,  over  which  are 
some  fancifully  constructed  bridges.  The  walks  and  drives  are 
serpentine,  in  the  English  style.  A  Chinese  tower,  a  cafe, 
with  other  edifices,  were  placed  to  afford  entertainment.  At 
the  entrance  a  monument  was  erected  to  my  father,  with  a 
pretty  inscription,  before  his  death.  English  ladies'  riding  was 
to  be  introduced,  —  a  reform,  so-called,  of  high  importance.  Not 
but  what  the  German  method  for  ladies  was  infinitely  safer. 
The  two  side-saddles  brought  from  England  by  my  father  were 
now  to  be  put  to  use,  in  an  exhibition  of  the  English  manner  of 
riding. 

"  It  was  the  month  of  September,  —  as  is  well  known  in  most 
northern  latitudes,  a  fine  month.  The  sun  had  lost  his  fiery 
hue,  was  shining  with  the  mild,  pale  lustre  of  declining  life,  or, 
in  other  words,  as  denotes  a  change  from  the  brilliant,  capti- 
vating season  of  the  year,  where  smiling  nature  affords  pleasure 
with  utility,  instead  of  calm  resignation.  There  was  visible  in 
the  court  a  clump  of  horses,  with  three  of  General  Thompson's 
people  to  tend  them, — the  groom,  the  huntsman,  and  the 
ostler  ;  but  the  huntsman,  possibly,  as  called  in  German,  the 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  301 

yager,  is  an  essential  personage  in  all  military  honors.  He 
wears  a  high,  upright  feather  in  a  three-cornered  hat,  with 
different  livery,  more  distinguished  than  that  of  the  other  ser- 
vants. There  were  several  horses.  Some  appeared  warm  and 
fatigued,  as  if  the  mounters  had  just  quitted  them,  which  was 
the  case,  they  being  those  of  the  General's  two  aides-de-camp, 
Lieutenant  Spreti  and  Captain  Count  Taxis,  with  one  or  two 
others  who  had  come  to  join  their  General  in  a  riding-party, 
or,  as  he  was  generally  called,  his  Excellency.  As  thnee  of  the 
horses  had  principal  parts  to  act,  a  description  of  them  will  here 
be  given.  They  bore  the  names  of  Tancred,  Fawn,  and 
Lambkin.  The  last  was  destined  for  a  lady  not  used  to  riding, 
requiring  a  gentle  horse,  —  as  was  Lambkin  particularly  so,  as 
the  name  bespoke.  This  lady  was  the  Countess  of  Nogarola, 
a  particular  friend  of  the  Baron's,  familiarly  called  by  him 
Mary.  Tancred  was  for  another  lady,  in  fact,  the  Count's 
daughter,  called  die  Frau  freilln  Sally  (Miss  Sally),  or  die  freilin 
Gre'fin  (Miss  Countess).  The  daughter  was  about  sixteen  [and 
nearly  half  as  much  more],  and  the  friend  twenty-five  or 
twenty-six.  Tancred  was  nothing  remarkable,  but  would  go 
very  well  with  the  free  use  of  the  whip  ;  but  Fawn  was  the 
personage,  like  the  yager,  —  the  General's  right-hand  man  and 
favorite.  How  can  such  perfect  beauty  and  excellence  be  de- 
scribed ?  Nothing  short  of  a  jockey  could  do  justice.  He  was 
of  proper  height  and  size, 'round,  plump,  had  a  little  head,  small 
features,  legs  and  feet,  a  sharp,  knowing  eye,  and  the  color  of 
the  most  beautiful  fawn.  Of  course,  his  hair  was  made  to 
shine  like  satin.  He  had  a  way,  when  standing  any  time,  of 
turning  his  head  almost  quite  round,  as  if  looking  for  some  one 
(his  master  fancied  it  was  for  him),  and  if  nothing  came  of  it  he 
would  begin  pawing  and  jumping.  His  back  was  hollow  and 
neck  curving." 

The  young  lady  introduces  at  this  point  in  her  nar- 
rative a  spirited  drawing  of  horse  and  groom,  not 
saying,  however,  of  which  of  the  three  animals  it  is 
a  sketch. 


302 


Life  of  Count  Rumford. 


"After  much  bustle  all  was  stillness  as  the  word  went  forth 
—  the  General  and  his  suit  descend, — then  a  rustling  on  the 
magnificent  looking-glass  staircase,  nearly  multiplying  objects 
into  innumerability.  And  what  objects  !  The  Baron,  a  hand- 
some man,  about  forty,  decorated  with  honors,  star  and  garter, 
appeared  accompanied  by  his  ladies,  one  under  each  arm,  beauti- 
fully dressed  in  the  English  style,  excepting  more  richly,  in 
scarlet  with  feathers  and  ermine.  One  of  the  ladies  was  sixteen 
[better,  twenty-two] ;  the  other,  twenty-six.  Lambkin  being 
brought  forward  for  the  elder  of  the  ladies,  and  it  requiring 
some  time  to  get  her  mounted,  on  account  of  her  being  no 
horsewoman,  the  younger  lady  became  impatient,  and  very 
much  so,  being  fond  of  the  amusement,  giving  one  of  the 
grooms  a  look,  had  the  horse  destined  for  her  brought  forward, 
skipped  on  with  trifling  assistance,  and  almost  immediately 
disappeared  ;  not  going  far,  however,  for  when  the  party  passed 
the  porte-cochere,  she  and  her  Tancred  were  found  perched  at  one 
side  of  it.  This  appeared  amusing  to  the  company,  occasioning 
a  general  laugh.  But  not  so  to  the  Baron.  He  frowned,  and 
particularly  so  when  he  perceived  the  young  lady's  whip 
dropped,  and  the  young  aid,  Count  Taxis,  dismount  to  pick 
it  up. 

"  This  accident  was  followed  by  a  detention  from  this  young 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  303 

lady's  shaking  about  her  saddle,  declaring  it  would  turn,  desir- 
ing it  to  be  fixed  differently.  This  being  complied  with,  the 
cavalcade  began  its  march,  —  the  Baron  on  the  splendid  Fawn,  a 
lady  on  each  side  of  him,  the  aids  and  others  behind  ;  and  novel 
was  the  sight,  the  ladies  being  dressed  and  seated  nearly  as  the 
English.  The  '  English  Garden  '  was  the  place  destined  for 
the  ride  ;  but  to  reach  it  a  part  of  the  streets  of  the  town 
were  to  be  passed  through,  and  many  were  the  curious  ones  at 
the  windows  to  see  the  sight.  All  things  went  on  well  thus 
far,  and  would  have  without  doubt  continued  so,  had  not  the 
younger  of  the  ladies,  without  due  consideration,  giving  a  whip 
to  her  horse,  set  out,  soon  losing  sight  of  the  company,  the 
timidity  of  the  other  lady  rendering  it  impossible  for  them  to 
follow.  The  Baron  much  frightened  at  seeing  this  young  per- 
son go  off  alone  in  unknown  roads  and  winding  paths,  looked  to 
his  aid  Spreti  to  tell  him  to  follow  her ;  but  before  the  words 
could  be  got  out  of  his  mouth  the  other  one,  Taxis,  was  on  the 
gallop.  On  arriving  home  in  safety,  relieved  of  our  riding- 
habits,  we  assembled  as  usual  at  the  supper-table  of  my  father 
to  take  each  of  us  a  basin  of  chocolate.  I  made  bad  dinners, 
not  being  fond  of  foreign  cookery  ;  was  fond  of  chocolate,  but 
never  had  half  enough  of  it.  Our  respectable,  charming  guest 
was  the  Countess  of  Nogarola,  who  will  be  often  mentioned  in 
this  narrative. 

"The  Palace,  my  father's  lodgings,  was  a  building  three 
stories  high,  sixty  or  sixty-five  feet  in  front,  running  back 
possibly  three  times  that  distance,  with  an  open  space  enclosed, 
already  mentioned,  called  the  court.  The  second  floor,  my  fa- 
ther's habitation,  was  composed  of  two  halls,  one  front  and  the 
other  back;  the  one  with  windows  on  the  street  and  also  on 
the  court  extending  the  width  of  the  front  part  of  the  palace ;  the 
back  premises,  with  windows  on  the  rear;  and  on  the  court 
were  the  rooms  my  father  particularly  occupied.  There  were 
three  staircases,  a  gallery,  and  eight  rooms  ;  the  gallery,  uniting 
the  two  halls,  consequently  gave  a  passage  throughout  the 
house,  and  gave  the  whole  a  handsome  appearance.  The  floors 
were  of  different-colored  marble,  or  of  smooth  stone,  resembling 


304  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

it,  inlaid  ;  the  windows  five  in  number,  with  five  of  plate  glass 
opposite  ;  an  arched  painted  ceiling  representing,  as  large  as  life, 
and  well  executed,  heathen  gods  and  goddesses,  instructive  as 
well  as  amusing.  The  second  floor  was  handsome,  conven- 
iently furnished,  in  fact,  might  be  considered  elegant,  yet  was 
nothing  in  comparison  with  the  first  floor.  That  was  a  display 
of  luxury  and  elegance  fatiguing  even  to  look  at,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  effect  of  a  daily,  hourly  occupation.  But  the  Russians 
are  fond  of  pomp  and  show. 

"  The  Elector  did  not  in  the  general  way  dress  with  half  the 
elegance  and  study  of  the  Ambassador,  whose  household  was 
composed  of  servants  unlike  all  others,  from  their  extraordinary 
height,  and  elegance  of  dress  ;  and  as  to  their  number,  it  was 
so  great  as  never  to  come  within  my  knowledge.  The  Ambas- 
sador had  no  lady  ;  yet,  to  a  great  dinner  that  he  gave,  my 
father  being  invited,  I  was  permitted  to  go  to  be  a  witness  to 
novel  scenes,  to  do  justice  to  which  would  be  long  and  difficult. 
I  will  only  mention  that  it  was  as  magnificent  as  can  be  sup- 
posed, given  by  a  person  of  his  high  calling  and  his  apparent 
love  of  show.  In  short,  there  was  a  profusion  of  everything 
that  could  tempt  the  appetite  or  delight  the  eye,  joined  to  com- 
pany of  the  first  class. 

"  My  father  had  some  peculiarities  of  character,  and  also  of 
domestic  arrangements,  besides  having  odd  things  befall  him. 
One  of  these  was  his  having  a  monument  erected  to  him,  with 
an  inscription,  long  before  he  died  !  He  kept  through  the  year 
a  box  at  the  opera,  without  going,  perhaps,  three  times  himself. 
A  doctor,  by  the  name  of  Haubenal,  he  hired  by  the  year !  He 
made  me  a  singular  present ;  indeed,  it  may  be  said  five,  there 
being  five  things.  The  circumstances  were  these. 

"  As  I  was  sitting  one  day  quietly  in  my  room,  meditating, 
not  having  much  to  do,  my  door,  being  shut,  suddenly  opened, 
and  in  skipped  a  little  white,  shaggy  dog,  as  white  as  snow, 
excepting  black  eyes,  ears,  and  nose.  This  was  one  of  the  pres- 
ents from  my  father.  I  was  pleased  with  her  and  kept  her  a 
long  time.  She  was  named  by  my  father  '  Cora.'  *  But 

*  This  little  dog  must  have  become  quite  a  pet  of  her  mistress,  for  I  find  the  fol- 


Life  of  Coiint  Rumford.  305 

while  I  was  caressing  her  the  door  opened  again,  three  people 
entering,  a  woman  with  two  men.  The  woman  spoke  first, 
addressing  me  in  French,  saying  her  name  was  Veratzy,  and  that 
she  was  sent  by  my  father  to  offer  her  services  as  a  teacher  in 
French  and  music.  Making  a  low  courtesy,  she  stood  back  to 
let  the  others  speak.  They  did  so,  and  it  was  the  same  story. 
They  had  come,  by  my  father's  desire,  as  teachers.  One,  by 
the  name  of  Dillis,  a  Catholic  priest,  was  a  professor  of  draw- 
ing. It  was  not  uncommon  with  that  class  of  people,  their 
salaries  being  small,  to  have  professions.  This  Dillis,  for  in- 
stance, was  one  of  the  best  men  in  the  world,  worthy  his  call- 
ing as  a  minister,  supporting  by  his  industry,  joined  to  his  trifling 
salary,  two  aged  parents,  and  bringing  up  three  brothers.  These 
priests  cannot  marry.  The  other  professor  was  for  Italian,  —  Al- 
berte,  or  Alberty,  as  I  shall  call  him,  sent  also  by  my  father  to 
offer  his  services  as  teacher  in  the  Italian  language.  The 
Signer  Alberte,  as  he  was  called,  was  most  judiciously  chosen, 
—  an  antidote,  in  appearance,  to  the  softer  passions  supposed  to 
be  so  easily  inspired  by  the  people  of  his  nation.  His  portrait 
merits  a  description,  particularly  as  he  was  sent  by  my  father  to 
teach  me  the  lovely,  harmonious  language  of  Italy.  His  stature 
was  under  the  common  size,  but  to  appearance  greater,  from  a 
great  prominency  of  back  and  shoulders,  so  as  nearly  to  hide  all 
signs  of  a  neck.  His  voice  was  not  more  fortunate,  being 
harsh.  His  head  corresponded  with  the  prominency  of  his 
back  ;  his  nose  the  same,  with  sharp,  fierce-looking  eyes.  Yet 
he  was  a  very  good-humored,  good  kind  of  a  man,  and  master 

lowing  reference  to  Cora  in  a  letter  written  by  Sarah  to  a  female  friend,  December  16, 
1799,  while  she  was  on  a  visit  at  President  Willard's,  in  Cambridge. 

"I  arrived  here  safe  the  evening  I  left  you,  and  had  the  satisfaction  of  find- 
ing the  President's  family  all  well,  excepting  himself.  I  went  to  meeting  yester- 
day all  day,  and  I  found  Cora  was  likely  to  be  so  unhappy  to  be  left  at  home  among 
strangers,  I  carried  her  with  me  in  my  muff.  She  began  to  breathe  very  hard  and  to 
cough  a  little  before  meeting  was  done,  but  upon  the  whole  she  behaved  very  well." 

Whether  the  excellent  pastor  of  the  Cambridge  congregation,  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Holmes,  knew  of  this  arrangement,  it  would  be  difficult  to  decide  ;  but  we  may  be 
sure  that  some  of  the  College  students,  who  then  attended  the  parish  meeting-house, 
and  whose  eyes  must  have  turned  with  interest  to  a  Countess  in  the  President's 
pew,  must  have  been  privy  to  the  fact. 
20 


306  Life  of  Count  Ritmford. 

of  his  profession.  Ignorant  of  the  different  merits  of  these 
people  at  the  time,  and  that  I  was  doomed  to  similar  visits,  my 
surprise  was  great,  and  not  greater  than  my  disgust  at  the  one 
just  described.  But  summoning  all  possible  fortitude,  I  dis- 
missed them  with  saying  I  would  think  of  it  ;  well  determined 
to  have  nothing  to  do  with  them.  But  these  making  only  four 
of  my  father's  donations,  another  remains  to  be  mentioned.  It 
was  another  visitor.  I  had  heard  of  Dr.  Haubenal,  but  had  not 
seen  him.  He  now  entering,  as  did  the  others,  from  my  father, 
if  was  by  his  announcing  himself  and  offering  his  services  that  I 
knew  him.  Of  the  two  I  was  the  more  surprised  and  shocked 
at  a  doctor's  offering  his  services  before  wanted  than  I  had 
been  even  at  the  sight  of  the  Italian.  I  began  immediately  to 
cough  before  he  got  out  of  my  room.  It  seemed  as  if  it  was 
owing  to  this  untimely  visit  of  the  doctor,  though  the  fact  was, 
I  had  been  several  days  threatened  with  a  cough. 

"  Said  I  to  myself,  Surrounded  by  people  who  speak  French, 
—  and  all  genteel  people  speak  it  at  Munich,  —  and  knowing 
considerable  of  the  language  already,  where  is  the  use  of  my  fa- 
tiguing myself  with  masters?  Music  the  same.  I  knew  some- 
thing of  it,  did  not  wish  to  trouble  myself  any  farther,  and  thought 
it  hard  there  should  be  a  question  of  it.  As  to  Italian,  I  had  no 
wish  to  know  it,  being  persuaded  I  should  not  have  occasion  to 
go  to  Italy,  and  as  to  reading,  there  was  surely  enough  to  read 
in  my  own  language.  In  the  like  manner  I  went  on,  believing 
myself  in  the  right  and  my  father  in  the  wrong,  till  I  fell  into  a 
copious  flood  of  tears.  At  this  moment  precisely  my  father 
enters  my  room,  and  with  a  countenance  so  joyful  that  necessity 
compelled  me  to  quit  my  troubles  in  contemplation  of  his  ap- 
parent self-satisfaction.  It  appeared  it  was  a  question  of  trav- 
elling some  way  with  a  very  old,  beloved  friend  of  his,  and  who, 
in  short,  was  no  other  personage  than  a  princess,  —  the  Princess 
deL . 

"  I  was  not  to  be  of  the  party,  but  to  go  to  the  Countess  in 
the  mean  time.  He  said,  '  You  know  she  is  an  angel  of  a 
woman,  and,  without  doubt,  will  make  you  very  happy/  Good 
as  she  was,  however,  the  first  thought  struck  me,  How  horrible 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  307 

to  be  left  behind  —  as  I  still  deemed  it  —  among  strangers  ;  and 
I  inquired  very  pitifully  if  my  teachers  were  to  accompany  me. 
Nothing  of  the  kind,  no  question  about  it,  was  the  reply. 
Amusement  was  the  object  of  the  day  ;  so  I  began  to  be  tolera- 
bly reconciled. 

"  Such  was  my  father's  satisfaction  at  the  prospect  of  taking 
this  journey  with  his  beloved  princess,  that  not  till  just  going 
out  of  the  door  did  he  remark  my  troubled  looks,  and  that  I  had 
been  crying.  Mistaking  the  cause,  he  said  in  an  affectionate 
manner,  'Do  not  grieve,  my  dear,  I  shall  soon  be  back.'  Of  a 
childish  nature  as  was  my  grief,  so  was  now  my  merriment  at 
the  mistake.  He  had  almost  persuaded  me  I  was  glad  he  was 
going ;  thought,  at  least,  I  should  have  my  liberty,  which  I 
viewed  not  to  be  the  case  as  I  then  was.  But  I  was  unjust 
toward  my  father,  while  he  was  as  kind  as  fathers  in  general. 
I  took  everything  amiss, — as,  for  instance,  my  having  these 
different  masters.  The  fact  was,  I  was  unhappy  everywhere, 
viewed  Germany  a  great  way  off,  as  I  called  it.  I  was  what 
we  call  homesick,  —  a  disagreeable  complaint,  for  a  time  in- 
curable. 

"  The  Countess,  in  her  evenings  with  us  previous  to  this 
contemplated  journey,  held  out  pleasing  ideas  of  things  to  take 
place  when  I  should  be  with  her.  We  were  to  go  to  a  ball  at 
court  (all  genteel  amusements  at  Munich  being  at  court). 
Count  Nogarola  (husband  to  the  Countess)  not  keeping  his 
carriage  at  the  time,  my  father  was  to  lend  us  his,  since  he  would 
not  need  it,  as  he  was  to  take  the  journey  with  the  Princess  in 
her  carriage.  So  we  had  planned  many  and  various  amuse- 
ments. But  for  all  that,  when  I  saw  my  father  make  prepara- 
tions for  his  journey,  I  would  be  crying,  but  with  no  one  to 
witness  my  tears  but  little  Cora. 

"  My  father,  being  high  in  military  station,  could  not  go 
away  at  a  minute's  warning,  as  at  this  moment  he  was  in  com- 
mand of  the  Bavarian  troops,  and  there  was  war  on  all  sides. 
The  French  and  Austrians  both  attempted  to  enter  the  city,  but 
were  prevented.  The  time  for  the  journey  having  come,  the 
Countess  arrived  to  escort  me  to  her  house,  and  the  Princess 


308  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

L was  actually  in  her  carriage  at  the  door.      My  father,  in 

the  general  way  a  slave  to  order,  from  imperious  necessity  had 
been  now  faulty,  not  being  ready  at  the  time  agreed  upon 
between  him  and  the  Princess,  which  was  the  more  distressing 
as  she  declined  to  enter.  This  occasioned  my  father  great 
bustle  and  confusion,  so  much  so  that,  when  he  came  to  go, 
such  was  his  absence  of  mind,  that,  though  passing  near,  he  did 
not  s.eem  to  see  and  took  no  notice  of  the  Countess  or  myself. 
I  having  equipped  myself  to  accompany  the  Countess,  my  maid 
standing  by  with  my  packet  of  things,  only  waiting  to  receive 
my  father's  last  kind  look,  and  to  hear  his  last  words  of  fare- 
well, to  have  him  depart  in  this  strange  manner,  not  having 
the  least  idea  of  the  cause,  was  astonishing.  The  Countess 
was  surprised,  and  I  broken-hearted.  Off  went  my  bonnet, 
declaring,  if  I  must  be  miserable,  it  should  be  at  home.  I  made 
sure  he  was  gone  to  be  married,  fancying  I  saw  some  white 
round  Aichner's  hat  (the  white  cockade  on  a  servant's  hat 
denoting  marriage).  I  recited  to  the  Countess  the  old  adage, — 

'  The  mother  's  a  mother  all  the  days  of  her  life ; 
The  father  's  a  father  till  he  gets  a  new  wife.' 

The  Countess,  after  reflecting  some  time  on  what  I  said,  with 
seeming  difficulty  to  preserve  her  seriousness,  informed  me  that 
at  least  this  time  my  father  had  not  gone  to  be  married,  for  that 
the  Princess  was  a  married  lady,  and  the  Prince,  her  husband, 
was  to  be  of  the  party.  A  servant  was  rung  for  to  know  the 
particulars,  when  we  were  informed  of  what  has  been  already 
mentioned.  c  Oh  ! '  I  exclaimed,  '  it  is  put  off,  that  is  all  \  the 
time  will  come,  I  shall  sooner  or  later  have  it  to  experience.' 
'So  long  as  it  is  not  to  be  for  the  present,'  replied  the  Countess, 
'  put  on  your  things  again,  and  come  along.  Let  us  see  what 
rational  amusement  will  be  found  in  my  quarter.'  I  went,  and 
was  as  happy  during  the  ten  days  of  my  father's  absence  as 
could  be  expected  ;  never  losing  sight  of  the  idea  that  I  was 
among  strangers, —alone  in  the  world  ! 

"  Our  excellent  friend,  the  Countess,  in  trying  to  render  me 
happy,  did  not  forget  the  Baron,  whom,  after  the  Count  Noga- 


Life  of  Count  Rimiford.  309 

rola  her  husband,  and  two  darling  children,  a  girl  and  a  boy, 
Therese  and  Andrew,  there  was  no  one  she  so  much  loved  and 
respected.  With  regard  to  myself,  as  was  before  mentioned 
was  the  intention,  I  accompanied  the  Countess  to  a  drawing- 
room.  After  this  there  were  parties  at  home,  or  going  out. 
A  fashionable  place  of  resort  was  at  what  was  called  the  Haus- 
meister's,  in  the  English  Garden.  After  some  turns  round  the 
Garden  we  would  go  there,  taking  refreshments.  In  the  man- 
ner in  which  my  father  was  travelling  he  had  no  need  of  his 
aids,  which  left  them  at  leisure  to  amuse  themselves.  In  our 
different  excursions  it  was  seldom  that  Count  Taxis  did  not 
either  go  with  us  or  meet  us.  The.  Countess  seemed  intimate 
with  his  family,  and  to  have  a  good  opinion  of  him,  and  her 
conversation  with  me  concerning  him  was  of  a  nature  to  make 
me  think  well  of  him.  This  was  not.  the  case  with  my  father, 
which  I  had  remarked,  but  did  not  know  the  cause.  Among 
other  things,  the  Countess  informed  me  that  this  gentleman,  a 
short  time  previous,  had  publicly  declared  his  intention  of  not 
marrying  a  noble  young  lady  of  Munich,  whom  I  knew,  but 
whose  name  I  have  no  call  to  mention,  — a  match  made  up  by 
his  and  her  family.  He  had  taken  a  sudden  fancy  to  learn 
English,  and  often  called  to  speak  it  with  the  Countess  and 
myself, —  she  speaking  English  uncommonly  well.  The  Count- 
ess conducted  me  one  day  a  few  miles  out  of  town  to  see  a 
beautiful  view.  After  looking  at  it  some  time,  she,  taking 
paper  and  pencil,  began  sketching.  She  invited  me  to  do  the 
same,  saying  it  was  not  difficult,  and  that  she  would  assist  me. 
I  accepted,  and  we  finished  the  sketch  together.  When  we 
returned  home  Dillis  was  sent  for  and  desired  to  put  the  sketch 
in  a  state  that  I,  with  his  assistance,  could  finish  it.  He  did  so, 
and  I  afterwards  became  his  pupil.  In  the  like  manner,  enticed 
on  by  the  Countess,  I  became  accomplished  in  matters  in  which 
my  father  had  failed  to  help  me  through  rougher  measures. 

"The  next  concern  was  music.  I  well  understood  my  fa- 
ther's wish  for  me  to  cultivate  it,  and  as  decidedly  so  my  own 
not  to  comply.  If  I  was  pleased  with  the  measures  taken  by 
the  Countess  about  drawing,  in  those  respecting  music  I  was 


310  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

charmed  by  a  performance  of  this  lady's  on  the  piano,  —  assem- 
bling her  two  cherubs,  Therese,  about  six,  and  Andrew,  about 
eight,  to  assist,  as  she  pretended,  in  singing.  The  performance 
of  the  children  was  novel  and  pleasing,  inspiring  me  with  a  wish, 
as  was  intended,  to  unite  my  weak  assistance,  the  Countess 
knowing  I  understood  music  a  little.  In  short,  the  plan  took. 
I  told  the  Countess,  if  she  would  allow  me,  I  would  play  and 
sing  a  little  song  of  which  I  knew  the  first  verse. 

*  Tell  me,  babbling  echo,  why 
•   You  return  me  sigh  for  sigh  ? 
When  I  of  slighted  love  complain, 
Thou  delight'st  to  mock  my  pain.' 

After  which  I  played  'God  save  the  King  '  in  character,  that  is 
to  say,  in  a  thumping  manner,  and  attempted  c  Washington's 
March,  but  failed,  —  my  sum  total  in  music.  I  was  praised 
beyond  measure,  and,  thus  encouraged,  decided  to  take  Miss 
Veratzy  as  teacher. 

"  Twenty-four  hours  had  elapsed  before  either  the  Countess 
or  myself  were  informed  of  the  arrival  of  my  father.  His  trav- 
elling companions  making  a  little  stop  to  pay  him  a  visit,  we 
were  not  sought  after.  The  system  of  the  great  world  seeming 
to  be  '  not  to  let  the  right  hand  know  what  the  left  hand 
doeth/  perhaps  that  was  the  reason.  In  the  less  cultivated 
climes  of  America,  in  case  of  visits  of  the  great  and  respectable 
the  whole  neighborhood  even  would  have  been  summoned  to 
help  out  in  making  things  agreeable.  The  Countess  and  I  were, 
however,  invited  on  the  evening  of  the  second  day  to  partake 
of  the  usual  supper  of  chocolate.  We  were  both  thankful  and 
glad  to  see  my  father  again,  —  the  Countess,  from  an  angelic 
temper  of  forgiveness  ;  and  I,  from  the  natural  love  of  a  child 
to  a  parent.  After  the  most  prominent  incidents  of  the  journey, 
such  as  my  father  thought  proper  to  communicate,  the  conver- 
sation turned  on  my  consenting  to  take  teachers,  on  my  intro- 
duction to  Dillis,  and  my  thinking  of  turning  my  attention  to 
music,  in  short,  my  receiving  lessons  from  the  said  Miss  Veratzy. 
In  order  to  profit  as  much  as  possible  from  this  unusual  docility, 
my  father  began  talking  about  the  beauties  of  the  Italian  Ian- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  311 

guage,  and  what  a  pity  it  was  I  should  not  know  something  of 
it  for  knowing  music.  In  short,  it  was  decided  that  I  should 
take  the  Italian  master.  I  looking  rather  serious,  the  cause  was 
inquired  of  it.  I  answered,  that  it  struck  me  that  a  person 
would  make  more  progress,  and  for  a  certainty  it  would  be 
much  more  agreeable,  to  have  a  master  not  such  a  lump  of  de- 
formity as  was  this  Signer  Alberty.  My  father  replied,  that  the 
Italians,  being  considered  a  very  gallant,  captivating  people,  it 
was  not  considered  prudent  to  have  them  as  teachers  with 
marked  personal  attractions.  The  observation  reminded  the 
Countess  of  an  anecdote  in  circulation  of  a  lady  of  distinction 
having  fallen  violently  in  love  with  her  music-master,  or  rather 
the  person  who  often  accompanied  her  in  her  music,  she  being 
herself  a  fine  musician.  My  father  seemed  much  surprised  and 
very  sorry  at  the  news,  for  the  lady  was  in  high  place,  and  even 
an  heir  to  the  crown  might  have  been  derived  from  her.  Still 
on  the  subject  of  teachers,  my  father  asked  the  Countess 
how  a  little  girl,  about  eight,  named  Sophy  Baumgarten,  niece 
to  the  Countess  got  on.  The  mother,  the  Countess  of  Baum- 
garten, was  the  Countess's  only  sister.  The  answer  was,  that 
Sophy  did  not  get  on  so  well,  owing  to  the  peculiarly  light, 
trifling  character  of  her  mother. 

u  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  two  characters  less  resembling 
each  other  than  these  two  sisters,  —  the  Countess  of  Nogarola, 
with  a  first-rate  understanding,  a  model  of  virtue,  not  plain,  but 
not  handsome  ;  the  other,  a  few  years  before,  a  celebrated 
beauty.  She  was  so  much  admired  and  celebrated  in  the  world 
that  even  crowned  heads  confessed  her  charms.  All  gentlemen 
were  in  love  with  her.  Alas,  poor  lady !  she  ended  in  not 
sufficiently  respecting  herself.  A  few  days  after  this  found  me 
established  with  the  whole  catalogue  of  teachers,  Alberty  at  the 
head  of  them.  My  studies  went  on  like  clock-work ;  my  fa- 
ther had  a  great  deal  of  order.  A  hairdresser  came  daily  to  dress 
my  hair.  Good  Animeetle  was  exchanged  for  Cecilia  Dumesnil, 
a  French  girl,  on  account  of  the  language.  Parents  do  wrong 
to  push  their  children.  Application  is  not  for  all.  Better  let 
them  remain  a  little  ignorant,  than  lose,  perhaps,  their  lives. 


312  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

u  The  time  arrived  for  me  to  be  plunged  in  study,  surrounded 
by  my  teachers,  —  Signer  Alberty,  with  his  four  feet  in  stature, 
his  great  nose  and  tremendous  prominency  of  back,  at  the  head 
of  them.  It  was,  nevertheless,  in  Italian  that  I  made  the  most 
progress.  Not  that  I  neglected  any  of  my  studies.  I  succeeded 
in  giving  such  satisfaction  that  my  father  in  great  affection 
called  me  bis  own  child,  — a  little  vanity  in  the  expression  which 
must  be  excused.  Alas  !  frail  nature  admits  of  no  control.  In 
vain  would  vanity  and  ambition  take  the  lead.  My  health 
began  to  decline.  My  flesh  left  me  as  if  it  had  wings  to  fly 
away.  I  became  ailing,  and  this  ended  in  the  whooping-cough. 
As  already  mentioned,  the  house,  or  rather  the  palace,  we  occu- 
pied was  large;  my  father  living  at  one  extremity,  and  I  at  the 
other.  All  who  have  had  the  whooping-cough  must  know  how 
troublesome  it  is,  and  that  a  person  is  everything  but  interesting 
when  in  a  fit  of  it.  My  father  had  never  exactly  seen  me  at 
one  of  these  moments,  till  going  in  haste  into  his  apartment  set 
me  out  coughing  with  the  whoop.  After  looking  at  me  with 
something  bordering  on  a  frown,  he  told  me  to  ring  a  bell.  I  did 
so.  He  sat  writing,  and,  looking  up,  said  it  was  not  the  right 
one,  it  must  be  another.  My  father  had  great  order  in  every- 
thing. If,  for  instance,  a  particular  servant  was  wanted,  there 
would  be  a  particular  bell  to  give  him  notice.  Two  servants 
now  came,  I  having  rung  two  bells  ;  the  valet,  being  one,  was 
kept,  and  the  other  sent  away.  My  father  said  to  him,  'Macht 
der  Haubenel  hier  kommen  ! '  I  did  not  know  German,  but 
understood  enough  of  this  to  conclude  that  it  summoned  the 
doctor,  and  began  retreating.  My  father  called  me  back,  ask- 
ing me  if  I  was  afraid  of  a  doctor  ;  adding,  that  he  understood 
I  had  not  treated  him  civilly  some  time  before.  I  was  informed 
that  in  all  probability  the  doctor  would  soon  be  with  me  ;  as  it 
happened,  nearly  as  soon  as  I  had  got  into  my  own  room.  I 
was  to  show  the  doctor  politeness.  Very  well !  That  was  not 
difficult.  But  to  be  dosed,  I  muttered  to  myself,  for  so  sim- 
ple a  thing  as  the  whooping-cough,  —  I  never  heard  of  such  a 
thing. 

"  A  word  of  explanation  for  this  apparent  obstinacy  may  not 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  313 

be  amiss.  I  think  I  must  have  implied  more  than  once  that  I 
had  a  great  love  and  veneration  for  my  mother.  It  was  very 
natural.  She  had  taken  care  of  me  in  my  infancy  and  child- 
hood, and  brought  me  up.  I  recollected  often  hearing  her  dis- 
approve the  habit  many  have  on  the  slightest  indisposition  of 
seeking  medical  assistance.  Yet,  poor  woman  !  I  best  recollect 
her  as  on  her  sick-bed,  with  the  doctor  by  her  side,  for  she 
never  had  even  tolerable  health.  Children  hear  and  reflect 
more  than  is  always  imagined..  I  remembered  her  telling  a  little 
story  of  my  father,  that,  if  anything  ailed  even  a  ringer,  the 
whole  house  must  be  put  in  an  uproar  about  it.  So  that,  in  the 
present  instance,  if  I  say  the  physician  arriving  left  me  an 
emetic,  which  I  put  aside  and  would  not  take,  I  only  followed 
the  precepts  of  my  mother  instead  of  those  of  my  father.  I  was 
perfectly  freed  of  the  disorder  in  a  short  time  without  the  least 
medicine. 

a  In  one  of  our  horseback  excursions  we  had  the  usual  party, 
except  that  the  Countess  was  kept  back  by  a  previous  engage- 
ment. It  proved  fortunate,  for  our  horses  were  restive  and 
troublesome,  so  much  so  that,  when  we  arrived  at  the  Garden, 
—  as  usual,  our  destination,  —  my  father  told  one  of  his  aids  — 
Spreti  —  to  go  with  him,  and  the  other  to  stay  with  me  ;  and 
the  same  to  the  grooms.  He  wished  to  let  Fawn  have  his  run 
out.  We  were  jogging  along  when  Tancred  started  and  like 
to  have  thrown  me.  Count  Taxis,  frightened,  said  to  me  in 
English  (which  I  did  not  suppose  he  knew  much  of,  we  never 
speaking  the  language,  and  which,  therefore,  surprised  me) 
c  Take  care,  my  dear  !  '  From  my  looking  down  and  making 
no  reply,  he  thought  I  was  offended.  He  drew  his  horse  near  to 
mine,  and,  looking  me  archly  in  the  face,  asked  me  if  I  did  not 
think  that  in  learning  English  he  learned  pretty  things.  I  told 
him  it  depended  on  the  sincerity  of  them.  I  spoke  without 
reflection,  but  think  he  construed  them  into  more  seriousness 
than  I  really  meant,  by  his  dwelling  some  time  on  assurances 
of  the  sincerity  of  his  words  and  thoughts  towards  me. 

"  By  an  unforeseen  accident,  if  these  assertions  were  true,  he 
was  called  upon  to  feel  and  express  more  forcibly  than  by  simple 


314  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

words.  I  had  been  indisposed  for  several  days,  but  said  nothing 
about  it,  from  the  childish,  foolish  idea  that  I  should  be,  as  I 
termed  it,  dosed.  From  the  same  childishness,  because  I  was 
fond  of  going  on  horseback,  I  came  out  when  I  ought  to  have 
stayed  at  home ;  and  from  being  in  a  restrained  posture  and 
among  strangers,  it  naturally  made  me  worse.  In  short,  I  grew 
so  bad  I  thought  I  was  dying,  and  told  the  Count  I  wished  to 
get  off  the  horse.  While  he  was  dismounting  and  making 
signs  to  the  groom  to  approach,  without  his  perceiving  it  I 
slipped  my  foot  out  of  the  stirrup,  and  took  hold  of  the  saddle 
to  let  myself  down,  but  before  I, could  do  it  my  senses  had  left 
me  ;  so  that  when  Taxis  turned  his  head,  it  was  not  to  see  me 
on  the  seat,  but  prostrate  on  the  ground.  There  was  the 
greater  cause  for  alarm  from  his  supposing  I  had  fallen,  instead 
of  letting  myself  down,  and  that  my  fainting  was  owing,  most 
likely,  to  some  hurt.  The  first  thing  I  realized,  on  coming  to 
my  senses,  was  Taxis  and  the  groom  exceedingly  frightened, 
lifting  me  about,  not  knowing  what  to  do  with  me.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  describe  the  expression  of  their  faces  when  they 
found  me  alive  instead  of  dead,  as  they  owned  they  much 
feared  ;  supposing  me  to  have  received  some  great,  and  perhaps 
fatal,  blow  from  the  fall.  They  were  likewise  much  rejoiced 
on  my  giving  particulars,  and  assuring  them  I  was  not  in  the 
least  hurt.  The  groom  thought  he  should  never  dare  to  see 
my  father  again,  had  anything  terrible  happened  to  his  daughter 
while  in  part  under  his  care.  The  expressions  of  Count  Taxis 
were  more  refined,  as  may  be  imagined.  He  showed  such  feel- 
ing and  friendship  on  the  occasion,  I  own  it  impressed  me  with 
the  most  lively  gratitude  and  friendship  for  him.  He  thought 
best  to  let  the  groom  go  in  search  of  my  father,  who  soon 
joined  us,  when  we  all  returned  safely  together. 

"  As  under  absolute  governments  distinction  of  classes  is 
observed,  so  that  between  the  General  and  his  aids  is  not 
forgotten.  My  father,  in  coming  to  the  door  after  our  ride, 
with  a  familiar  nod  of  the  head,  without  asking  them  to  enter, 
dismissed  his  aids.  But  Taxis,  as  it  appeared,  went  straight  to 
the  Countess,  giving  her  information  of  the  bad  success  of  our 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  315 

party  on  horseback,  for  almost  as  soon  as  ourselves  she  had 
mounted  to  our  apartment.  Seeing  her  reminded  me  of  a  ball 
to  take  place  at  the  court  the  following  evening,  where  she  was 
to  go,  and  I  to  accompany  her.  She  presumed  I  would  not  go ; 
and  neither  my  feelings  nor  propriety  could  authorize  the  act. 
But  a  foolish,  wild  thought  having  crossed  my  mind,  decided 
me  on  going,  and  I  went.  On  entering  the  spacious,  splendid 
halls,  the  first  duty  was  to  pay  court  to  crowned  heads,  —  those 
in  question,  the  Elector  and  Electrice,  —  which  ceremony  passed, 
we  seated  ourselves.  Count  Taxis,  as  one  of  the  young  persons 
generally  present  at  court  balls,  perceiving  us,  came  up  to  speak 
to  us.  In  looking  at  me  with  considerable  attention,  as  he 
inquired  after  my  health,  particularly  to  know  how  I  found 
myself  after  the  ill  turn  in  the  Garden,  he  suddenly  turned 
away  his  head  with  a  singular  expression,  beginning  at  the  same 
time  an  animated  conversation  with  the  Countess. 

cc  Without  exactly  hearing  what  was  said,  I  had  reason  to 
think  myself  not  foreign  from  the  subject,  they  frequently 
casting  on  me  their  eyes.  In  this  supposition  I  was  soon  con- 
firmed, the  Countess  going  to  take  leave  of  the  Electrice,  then 
coming  and  saying  to  me  that  we  were  to  return  home,  I  being 
too  ill  to  be  out.  *  Yes,'  replied  Count  Taxis,  being  still  near 
us,  'you  ought  not  to  have  come.'  'What,'  I  said,  looking 
him  in  the  face,  c  when  I  came  on  purpose  to  thank  you  for 
your  kindness  of  yesterday,  are  you  not  glad  to  see  me  ?  '  He 
making  me  no  reply,  I  consoled  myself  with  fancying  he  looked 
affected.  We  soon  found  our  carriage  and  reached  home. 

"  The  ball-dress  quitted,  and  I  a  little  rested,  I  was  tempted 
to  follow  my  two  friends,  my  father  and  the  Countess,  she 
being  still  with  us,  to  the  tete-a-tete  supper-table.  I  went,  but 
neither  partook  nor  stayed  long,  quitting  them  without  giving  a 
reason,  leaving  them  to  think,  if  they  might,  that  it  was  with 
an  intention  to  return.  On  the  contrary,  I  went  to  my  room, 
summoned  my  maid,  desired  her  to  prepare  my  bed,  and  assist 
me  in  getting  into  it,  I  being  so  violently  seized  with  a  fit  of 
ague  as  to  be  nearly  unable  to  help  myself.  The  girl,  having 
executed  my  orders,  was  for  running  to  inform  my  father  and 


316  Life  .of  Count  Rumford.  . 

the  Countess,  but  I  stopped  her,  forbidding  it ;  and  not  till  an 
equally  violent  fever  fit  succeeded,  the  maid  much  frightened, 
contrary  to  my  orders,  going  to  give  them  notice,  all  hands 
arrived  soon,  followed  by  the  doctor.  My  father  had  offended 
me  a  few  days  previous  by  saying  I  was  always  ailing,  and  I 
had  not  forgiven  him.  So  I  had  two  motives  in  going  off  in 
that  clandestine  manner,  —  one,  because  my  father  had  affronted 
me ;  and  another,  the  dread  of  the  doctor's  prescriptions.  And 
now  they  began.  An  emetic  was  proposed.  I  refused  it,  say- 
ing that,  so  far  from  requiring  it,  I  was  then  hungry.  It  was 
urged,  even  insisted  on.  I  declared  if  they  approached  me  I 
would  dash  the  cup  which  contained  it  from  their  hands  It 
was  given  me,  without  my  knowing  it,  in  some  herb  tea. 

"  On  experiencing  the  sickness,  and  presuming  from  what 
cause,  I  cried  bitterly,  and  said  they  had  deceived  me.  This 
was  the  last  trouble  they  had  with  me  of  this  nature.  I  was 
soon  so  ill  as  not  to  know  or  care  what  took  place.  I  was  con- 
fined six  weeks  to  my  bed  with  a  fever,  —  part  of  the  time  be- 
tween life  and  death. 

"My  next  appearance  was  in  the  banqueting-hall,  celebrating 
my  father's  birthday  [in  March,  1797],  at  my  expense  (my 
father  allowing  me  pocket-money),  but  planned  and  principally 
executed  by  the  Countess,  on  the  sly,  to  occasion  a  surprise. 
The  preparations  of  this  festival  were  various,  requiring  three 
weeks'  time  to  execute.  I  had  little  to  do  in  them  excepting 
being  enjoined  to  keep  the  secret  from  my  father.  I  was, 
besides,  convalescent  only,  unable  to  lend  much  assistance. 

"  The  first  concern  was  to  have  a  bust  made  of  my  father. 
For  the  want  of  the  original  to  copy,  a  portrait  was  made  use 
of,  which  answered,  they  having  got  a  very  tolerable  likeness. 
A  short  time  before  the  occasion  arrived,  having  procured  a 
profusion  of  artificial  flowers,  this  bust  was  ornamented,  as 
likewise  some  of  the  rooms,  to  the  number  of  five,  one  of 
which  was  an  immense  hall  allowed  for  my  use,  my  father  hav- 
ing no  use  for  them.  All  of  these  being  handsomely,  some 
even  elegantly,  furnished,  and  being  reached  by  the  splendid 
staircase  of  looking-glass,  rendered  a  festival  easy  to  give,  and 


•  Life  of  Count  Rumford.  317 

elegant  in   its  effects.      Besides  which    nothing  was    spared   to 
render  ours  conformable  to  the  elegance  of  the  apartments. 

"  Refreshments  in  great  plenty,  proper  for  the  occasion  ;  a 
society  as  select  as  it  was  numerous  ;  the  rooms  illuminated  — 
to  speak  largely — to  vie  with  the  noonday  sun!  the  music, 
both  vocal  and  instrumental,  the  best  that  Munich  afforded, 
perhaps  none  better  in  the  world.  More  attention  was  paid 
to  this  particular,  my  father  being  extravagantly  fond  of  music. 
And  from  a  very  pretty  manner  they  had  of  ornamenting  with 
flowers,  that  of  twisting  them  into  letters  and  then  to  words, 
expressing  verse,  prose,  &c.,  my  father  had  many  pretty  com- 
pliments paid  him,  particularly  in  the  ornamenting  of  the  bust. 
Around  this  bust  was  a  group  which  drew  upon  us  all  much 
praise  and  many  compliments,  —  the  Countess,  her  two  children 
allowed  to  be  present,  Sophy  Baumgarten,  about  eight  years 
old,  daughter  of  the  Countess  Baumgarten,  sister  to  the 
Countess  Nogarola;  myself;  six  children  (little  girls)  from  my 
father's  poorhouse,  prettily  dressed  at  my  expense,  in  white, 
as  were  we  all.  For  the  more  elderly  part  of  our  guests  cards 
were  prepared  ;  music  for  the  dance,  vocal  and  instrumental 
music  for  the  ear,  —  which  made  three  distinct  amusements 
without  counting  that  of  not  doing  anything  at  all. 

"  My  father's  two  aids,  Lieutenant  Spreti,  and  Captain  Count 
Taxis,  were  not  forgotten  in  the  number  to  be  invited,  and  who 
accepted  and  were  present.  Neither  of  them  had  I  seen  during 
or  after  my  illness.  Of  course  the  latter  was  the  only  one 
interesting  to  me.  With  Lieutenant  Spreti  I  had  barely  ever 
exchanged  a  word.  The  festival  began,  we  all  at  our  places, 
the  lights  glittering,  the  company  arrived,  the  music  struck  up  a 
divine  piece,  vocal  and  instrumental,  in  which  all  who  could 
sing  joined  in  a  chorus,  when  my  father  was  ushered  in.  A 
considerable  difficulty  had  arisen  to  get  him  dressed  without  his 
knowing  for  what  purpose,  and  to  prevent  his  seeing  the  lights 
of  my  highly  illuminated  rooms,  some  being  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  court  facing  his.  All,  however,  was  happily  accom- 
plished, and  he  arrived  utterly  astonished,  as  much  so  as  the 
guests,  who  were  curious  to  see  the  effect  all  this  might  have 


^i 8  Life  of  Coitnt  Rnmford. 

on  him.  I,  very  naturally,  was  not  one  of  the  least  curious  to 
a  point,  I  must  say  it  in  justice  to  myself.  I  quite  forgot  my- 
self,—  forgot  I  had  a  part  of  no  little  importance,  that  of  being 
the  ostensible  mistress  of  the  house.  But  I  thought  nothing  of 
it.  My  father  behaved  charmingly.  After  the  first  surprise, 
which  was  great,  he  went  about  bowing  and  smiling,  showing 
his  white  teeth,  of  which  he  was  very  proud,  thanking  people  for 
the  trouble,  as  he  termed  it,  of  coming  to  see  him. 

"  The  music  was  not  spared,  several  fine  pieces  were  per- 
formed, but  we  all  of  us  had  something  to  do.  The  Countess 
had  a  simple  song  enabling  her  little  children  with  their  juvenile 
voices  and  talents  to  join  her,  having  a  pretty  effect,  as  likewise 
a  piece  of  music  of  a  superior  quality  on  the  piano,  (she  being  a 
fine  musician,)  accompanied  by  the  other  musicians.  I  had  a 
letter  of  compliment  in  Italian  to  present  my  father,  —  he  not 
knowing  me  so  far  advanced  in  the  language.  The  poorhouse 
children  presented  written  expressions  of  their  gratitude  and 
respect.  The  little  Miss  Sophy  Baumgarten,  above  mentioned, 
had  a  more  dignified  part  to  act  than  any  of  us,  being  signalized 
out  by  my  father  (while  the  Countess,  her  children,  and  myself, 
were  barely  noticed)  as  the  object  of  great  attention.  So  pointed 
was  it  as  to  attract  the  notice  of  all  present.  At  all  events, 
such  undoubtedly  was  the  intent ;  for  if  it  was  to  cross  the 
room  this  child  was  led  by  the  hand,  and,  if  seated,  placed  by 
his  side. 

"  Contemplating  some  time  this  singular  sight,  I  applied  to 
the  Countess  to  know  what  it  meant.  She,  not  giving  me  a 
positive  answer,  smiling,  said  I  was  to  take  notice  that  her 
sister,  the  Countess  of  Baumgarten,  was  not  present ;  which,  in 
the  crowd,  I  had  not  before  observed.  This  adding  still  to  the 
mystery  in  which  before  the  matter  was  enveloped,  I  returned 
with  eagerness  to  my  business  of  watching,  and  in  consequence 
of  it  the  truth  was  revealed  to  me,  either  by  my  good  or  bad 
genius,  —  I  think  it  was  the  latter,  —  as  I  had  better  not  have 
known  it.  The  striking  resemblance  that  existed  between  my 
father  and  the  said  Sophy  put  it  beyond  a  doubt  that  I  was  no 
longer  to  consider  myself  an  only  child,  —  which  was  the  case 


Life  of  Count  Riwnford.  319 

before.  Be  it  from  jealousy,  or  from  what  other  cause,  the 
thought  made  me  miserable.  In  cases  of  great  trouble  and  per- 
plexity, often  great  resolutions,  even  unnatural  energies,  come 
to  our  aid.  My  surprise  and  vexation  were  great.  Had  I  been 
alone,  most  likely  vent  would  have  been  given  by  a  few  tears. 
But  in  a  mixed,  great  society  like  that,  how  would  it  be  possi- 
ble ?  Then  a  thought  struck  me,  which,  as  I  observed  before, 
either  my  good  or  my  evil  genius  pointed  out,  and  this  time  I 
will  give  no  opinion  as  to  which  I  think  it  was.  But  the 
thought  was  retaliation,  or,  in  other  less  soft  words,  revenge." 

It  will  be  a  satisfaction  to  the  reader  to  be  informed 
that,  so  far  as  is  known,  the  Countess  never  put  her 
resolve  into  execution. 

tc  I  had  been  given  to  understand,  that,  as  head  or  mistress 
of  the  festival,  or  dancing  part  of  the,  amusement,  I  was  not  to 
dance  ;  as,  since  it  would  be  impossible  to  dance  with  all,  to 
dance  with  some  would  give  offence.  Consequently  I  had 
refused  my  friend  Taxis,  who  had  not  only  invited,  me,  but 
who  had  several  times  repeated  the  invitation  to  dance  with 
him,  and  who  was  seldom  far  from  me,  and  was  lavish  of  kind 
looks.  I  now,  in  return,  showed  a  disposition  to  be  friendly, 
sought  him  with  my  eyes,  and,  slighting  consequences  liable  to 
ensue,  danced  with  him.  As  we  disappeared  in  the  dance  and 
the  crowd,  I  took  care  to  look  to  see  if  my  father  perceived  us, 
and  fancied  he  did. 

"  We  all  separated  at  a  proper  time,  apparently  well  pleased 
with  each  other,  and  the  company  the  same  with  the  entertain- 
ment. I,  in  part  forgetting  my  little  or  great  vexation,  as  any 
one  may  think  it,  was  very  happy.  All  had  been  kind  and  civil 
to  me.  I  having  been  so  ill,  some,  those  with  whom  I  was 
most  acquainted,  seemed  to  express  a  joy  to  find  me  alive 
again  ;  and  all  told  me  they  had  sent  repeatedly,  which  I  already 
knew,  to  inquire  after  me.  In  short,  all'  this  made  me  very 
happy,  and  I  began  to  form  dreams  of  happiness. 

"  The  morning  after  the  party  my  father  sent  for  me  to  come 
and  breakfast  with  him,  —  a  favor  seldom  allowed.  It  is  true,  he 


320  Life  of  Count  Rum  ford. 

had  generally  at  that  hour  gentlemen  around  him,  rendering  it 
improper.  But  I  was  much  flattered  by  this  invitation,  draw- 
ing from  it  favorable  conclusions,  that  he  had  been  pleased  with 
the  fine  banquet  made  in  honor  of  him  ;  in  short,  that  he  had 
no  objection,  as  I  was  dying  to  do,  to  talk  over  the  occurrences, 
in  calling  to  mind  the  features  of  it  the  most  prominent  and 
agreeable.  By  all  those  in  the  habit  of  frequenting  such  oc- 
casions, this  is  an  absolute  want,  —  the  pleasure  equalling  nearly, 
if  not  quite,  the  first  enjoyment.  When  girls  get  together  for 
this  discussion,  it  is,  '  How  pretty  he  was  ! '  and  '  How  ugly  she 
was  ! '  While  at  my  toilet,  arranging  myself,  never  with  more 
care,  what  with  reflections  on  the  preceding  evening  and  the 
anticipated  pleasure  of  the  breakfast,  there  became  riveted  on 
my  countenance  a  smile,  like  distorted  muscles  after  an  inordi- 
nate laugh,  difficult  to  change  ;  so  that  on  arriving  at  my  fa- 
ther's, which  had  been  by  a  jump  and  a  bounce,  that  enchanting 
complacency,  so  great,  seemed  for  a  moment  to  disconcert  him. 
But  a  general  is  not  easily  turned  from  his  plans.  It  is  for  us, 
poor,  weak  females,  to  be  overcome  by  circumstances.  Obey  ! 
is  the  order  with  them ;  no  reasoning. 

"  Without  endeavoring  to  give  a  darker  coloring  to  the  pic- 
ture than  what  is  due,  or  to  cast  blame  illy  becoming  a  child, 
let  us  rather  attribute  things  to  the  casualty  of  human  nature  ; 
at  the  same  time,  receive  them  as  a  warning  and  check  to  too 
elevated  ideas  of  happiness  seldom  or  never  realized.  This  was 
my  situation  ;  this  check  I  had.  When  quitting  my  father's 
apartment,  it  was  with  totally  different  feelings  and  expectations 
than  when  I  went.  It  was  now,  without  doubt,  to  see  life  un- 
adorned by  youthful  imagination.  In  short,  my  troubles  came 
from  exaggerated  or  real  faults  which  I  had  committed.  It 
was  thought  improper  that  I  should  keep  a  secret  from  my 
father,  he  my  best  friend,  —  it  being  the  case  in  the  affair  of  the 
banquet ;  surprises,  requiring  to  be  carried  on  by  the  sly,  led  to 
deception,  a  vile  trait  of  character,  and,  if  necessary,  to  false- 
hoods. In  short,  my  conduct  to  Count  Taxis  was  alluded  to 
and  disapproved.  So  that  here,  with  one  blow,  were  demolished 
all  my  fine  castles  in  the  air. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  321 

"  I  was,  as  in  times  before,  to  spend  my  time  in  tears  and 
study.  I  received  my  admonition  in  silence,  without  making  a 
reply,  —  I  will  not  say  from  what  motive,  but  fear  it  was  more 
independent  than  wise.  I  did  not  say,  as  I  could  have  done, 
that  the  Countess,  all  but  an  angel,  from  the  purest  and  best  of 
motives,  was  the  beginner  and  ender  of  the  banquet ;  that  I,  in 
revealing  the  secret  to  my  father,  must  have  betrayed  her ;  and, 
to  sum  up  the  whole,  if  he  expected  me  to  be  so  perfect  in  my 
conduct  towards  Count  Taxis,  why  was  he  not  more  so  in  that 
with  his  beautiful  illegitimate  ?  " 

The  young  lady  goes  on  to  describe  her  sufferings 
from  continued  ill-health,  from  her  sensitiveness,  from 
her  father's  disapproval  of  her  innocent  attentions  to 
Count  Taxis,  and  from  the  rigidness  of  the  diet  to 
which  she  was  subjected.  She  grieved  also  at  a  pro- 
spective separation  from  the  Countess  Nogarola,  whose 
husband,  obliged  to  go  to  Italy  on  business,  thought  .of 
taking  his  family  with  him.  Dr.  Haubenel  proposed  a 
journey  for  her  health,  in  which  the  Countess  and  her 
father  should  be  her  companions.  Accordingly,  in  a 
pleasant  season,  they  left  Munich,  in  her  father's  car- 
riage, with  a  maid  and  valet,  and,  driving  a  day's  journey 
to  a  beautiful  seat  of  the  Elector's,  at  Ammerland  See, 
they  sent  back  their  vehicle  and  servants,  that  they 
might  be  more  free  in  their  movements.  They  had 
the  Elector's  permission  to  make  a  temporary  home 
at  this  princely  residence,  where  they  had  attendance, 
with  sumptuous  fare,  and  fine  scenery,  and  mountain 
views.  Miss  Sarah  writes  that  she  exceedingly  enjoyed 
the  change  to  freedom  and  nature,  after  eighteen  months 
of  confinement  to  the  artificial  life  of  the  city  and  the 
lassitude  of  illness.  The  lake  afforded  them  fine  fish 
for  their  table,  and  in  an  elegant  pleasure-boat  manned 


21 


o 


22  Lift  of  Count  Rumford. 


with  able  rowers  they  enjoyed  excursions  and  an- 
gling upon  it,  while  at  evening,  the  maid  attending 
Sarah  and  the  Countess,  they  would  bathe  in  the  soft 
waters. 

This  repose  was  to  be  followed  by  a  journey,  the 
route  of  which  her  father  kept  secret,  that  mystery 
might  add  to  the  enjoyment.  "  My  father  had  ap- 
peared to  try  to  see  how  agreeable  he  could  make  him- 
self; as  if  wishing  to  wear  off  by  it  some  of  the  disa- 
greeable impressions  of  his  late  conduct,  in  drawing  so 
many  tears  from  my  poor  eyes.  And  he  was  ingenious 
in  it.  He  could  do  one  way  or  the  other.  And  it  was 
invariably  the  case,  that  when  quiet  and  happy  himself, 
he  was  like  others,  or,  in  other  words,  agreeable;  but 
when  perplexed  with  cares  or  business,  or  much  occu- 
pied, there  was  no  living  with  him." 

This  sharpness  of  a  daughter's  judgment  of  her  fa- 
ther must  be  regarded  as  lying  rather  in  the  force  of 
its  expression  than  in  any  real  severity  of  feeling.  The 
amount  and  variety  of  work  performed  by  Count  Rum- 
ford,  the  multiplicity  of  the  details  which  engaged  his 
attention,  and  the  large  number  of  agents  and  subordi- 
nates whom  he  had  to  direct,  as  well  as  his  almost 
mechanical  observance  of  order  and  system,  might 
naturally  engross  his  mind  in  his  hours  of  business. 
That  he  was  affable  and  genial  when  he  had  intervals 
of  leisure  and  repose  might  well  relieve  him  from  all 
reproach  for  austerity  at  other  times.  Nor  is  it  to  be 
forgotten,  that,  having  to  act  in  a  full  parental  capacity 
to  a  motherless  and  evidently  somewhat  volatile  and 
self-willed  young  woman,  he  might  have  had  a  judgment 
of  his  own,  had  he  chosen  to  express  it,  to  offset  that 
of  his  daughter  on  himself. 


Life  of  Count  Riwnford.  323 

The  £l  mystery  "  of  the  movements  of  the  Count  was 
not  a  very  deep  one.  The  party  set  out  on  foot,  tak- 
ing a  guide  with  them,  through  fields  and  by-roads,  and 
after  three  or  four  hours'  travel  they  came  to  what 
seemed  to  the  young  lady  an  immense  chateau,  so  large 
that  the  whole  of  it  could  not  be  seen,  and  surrounded 
by  water,  so  as  to  be  accessible  only  by  a  drawbridge. 
Her  father  seemed  to  be  familiar  with  the  spot,  and, 
pulling  at  a  cord,  caused  a  very  heavy-toned  bell  to 
sound  its  echoes  loudly,  when  two  well-dressed  men 
appeared,  with  whom  he  had  some  secret  whispering. 
The  consequence  was  that  the  great  doors  opened  as  if 
by  enchantment.  The  party  were  shown  into  elegant 
apartments,  were  most  hospitably  entertained,,  and 
yielded  to  urgent  solicitations  to  pass  the  night  within 
its  walls.  Though  Miss  Sarah  was  soon  impressed  by 
the  fact  that  not  a  female  was  to  be  seen  about  the 
establishment,  and  that  their  entertainers  were  all  gen- 
tlemen "  of  breeding,"  it  was  not  till  the  next  morn- 
ing that  she  knew  the  establishment  to  be  what  she 
calls  a  convent. 

They  visited  another  like  institution  the  next  day. 
The  young  lady  relates  at  some  length  their  experiences 
in  the  ascent  of  a  mountain,  which  they  made  at  night 
on  account  of  the  heat  of  the  weather.  It  was  a  rugged 
task  for  the  ladies,  especially  for  the  delicately  nurtured 
and  fragile  Countess  Nogarola.  They  experienced  the 
embarrassments  arising  from  the  ordinary  female  cos- 
tume for  such  a  tramp,  and  the  Count's  practical  wis- 
dom seems  to  have  suggested  to  them  such  an  approxi- 
mation of  the  arrangement  of  their  apparel  to  circum- 
stances as  anticipated  the  style  of  some  of  the  more 
independent  of  their  sex  in  our  times.  The  poor 


324  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Countess,  as  she  went  half-way  up  the  mountain,  "try- 
ing to  make  herself  a  little  more  comfortable,  put  her 
stockings  (horribly  wet,  as  were  mine,  with  all  the  rest  of 
our  things)  on  a  bush  to  dry.  A  mischievous  cow  ran 
away  with  one,  champing  it  to  pieces  ;  so  that  when 
we  came  down  from  the  summit  we  found  the  poor 
Countess  with  but  one  stocking,  mourning  the  loss  of 
the  other.  My  father's  man,  taking  off  one  of  his, 
supplied  the  place  of  it,  but  not  without  difficulty  to 
make  it  fit  in  her  much  smaller,  more  delicate  shoe." 
The  Count  himself,  who  had  made  the  ascent  before, 
did  not  escape  without  a  fall  and  a  roll  over  the  rocks, 
which  afforded  amusement  to  his  daughter.  They  had 
a  pretty  adventure  at  their  resting-place  in  being  enter- 
tained by  two  peasant-girls,  who,  having  two  chalets 
half-way  up  the  mountain,  were  sent  there  to  watch  the 
cows  that  were  pastured  there  in  midsummer.  ' 

The  party  returned  pleased  and  renovated  to  Mu- 
nich; the  American  girl  growing  more  reconciled  to 
her  lot,  and  anticipating  with  more  relish  the  court 
routine  of  another  winter.  But  her  trials  were  not 
over.  Her  friend  the  Countess  was  accustomed  to 
dine  once  a  week  with  her  mother,  the  Countess  of 
Lerchenfeld.  Miss  Sarah  being  now  for  the  first  time 
invited  to  join  her  friend,  obtaining  the  consent  of  her 
father,  went,  and  unexpectedly,  as  she  implies,  found 
Count  Taxis  of  the  party.  She  represents  her  father  as 
habitually  afraid  or  suspicious  of  the  intrigues  of  ladies, 
and  that  he  was  thus  prompted  on  the  next  day  to 
make  a  visit  to  the  Countess  of  Lerchenfeld,  where  he 
learned  who  had  been  his  daughter's  companion  at 
dinner.  He  chose  to  regard  the  affair  as  a  female 
conspiracy,  and  the  following  day  brought  him  to  the 


Life  of  Count  JRumford.  325 

apartments  of  his  daughter  with  lowering  looks,  and 
even  more  incensed  than  he  had  been  at  the  secrecy  with 
which  she  had  planned  the  birthday  banquet. 

"  I  feeling  myself  innocent,  as  I  was  (it  being  as  much  a 
surprise  to  me  as  to  my  father  that  the  invitation  to  the  dinner 
was  to  meet  Count  Taxis,  that  being  the  subject  of  the  diffi- 
culty), I  at  first  only  stared.  After  which,  on  knowing  what  it 
meant,  like  many  young  people  who  laugh  when  there  is  noth- 
ing to  laugh  at,  an  irresistible  inclination  seized  me  to  laugh  ; 
which  I  having  for  some  time  suppressed  only  burst  forth  with 
the  greater  violence,  and  it  ended  in  my  father's  boxing  my 
ears.  Little  expecting  such  an  indignity,  I  quitted  t'he  room 
without  making  an  observation,  or  trying  to  appease  him  by 
saying  I  was  innocent.  Nor  did  he  ever  know,  as  I  believe, 
but  what  I  had  given  rendezvous  to  Count  Taxis,  and  met  him 
from  a  spirit  of  intrigue.  Much  the  contrary,  the  Countess 
knowing  very  well  I  should  not  have  gone,  had  I  known  for 
what  purpose.  Besides,  she  was  too  just  and  delicate  to  place 
me  in  such  a  situation." 

We  must  infer,  therefore,  that  Count  Taxis  came  in 
by  chance  to  the  dinner.  Our  sympathies  are  engaged 
for  the  girl  in  the  following  like  episode. 

"  I  must  be  allowed  here  to  take  a  step  of  retrogression. 
When  I  was  a  little  girl  of  four  or  five  years  old,  I  had  two 
playmates  about  my  own  age,  by  name  William  and  Elenora 
Green  ;  and  we  were  very  fond  of  each  other.  We  were  sent 
to  day-schools  together  in  the  neighborhood,  and  were  so  much 
together  that  we  were  called  the  inseparables.  We  grew  up  in 
this  manner  in  real  love  and  friendship.  We  knew  no  differ- 
ence from  brother  and  sisters,  excepting  I  might  have  been  a 
little  more  civil  than  the  sister.  For  William  was  exceedingly 
pretty  and  engaging,  and  his  mother,  doatingly  fond  of  him,  led 
him  to  exact  more  from  us  than  he  otherwise  might  have  done. 
Mrs.  Green,  the  mother,  was  rather  romantic  in  her  character, 
and  dressed  her  son  fantastically,  keeping  his  hair  (beautiful 


326  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

golden  locks)  always  in  ringlets,  with  belts  of  curious  construc- 
tion round  his  waist  confining  beautiful  dresses,  a  jockey  cap 
with  feathers  on  his  head  ;  and,  more  than  all  the  rest,  she 
bought  him  a  fife,  and  had  him  instructed  to  play  on  it  several 
little  tunes.  It  was  this  fife  particularly  which  I  was  obliged  to 
hear,  for  Elenora  would  not.  As  may  be  supposed,  the  music 
of  such  a  child  was  not  the  most  agreeable.  Even  while  I 
would  be  listening  to  the  little  Apollo,  my  eyes  would  wistfully 
be  turned  towards  Elenora,  much  preferring  some  other  amuse- 
ment. But  William  was  not  ungrateful.  Taken  away,  at  a 
later  period,  to  other  schools,  he  never  forgot  us,  —  or,  in  plain 
words,  myself;  seeking  all  the  means  proper  in  his  power  to 
give  me  testimonies  of  his  friendship.  His  mother  knowing 
this,  as  I  have  observed,  being  .a  little  romantic,  made  proposals 
to  my  mother  that  at  a  future  period  we  should  be  married. 
My  mother,  thinking  well  of  the  lad,  liking  the  family,  and 
having  my  happiness  at  heart,  gave  consent  at  once.  The  same 
thing  happened  to  me  here.  Count  Taxis,  through  the  Countess, 
asking  me  of  my  father,  I  got  my  ears  boxed,  and  Count  Taxis 
with  his  regiment  was  sent  into  the  country !  One  actuated  by 
the  feelings  of  a  mother,  the  other  by  those  of  an  ambitious 
father  !  " 

The  young  lady,  drawing  a  parallel  between  her  con- 
dition and  that  of  Job,  when  the  messengers  of  woe 
came  to  him  in  succession  with  ill  tidings,  proceeds 
thus  :  — 

"  The  Countess  called  one  morning  (thinking,  perhaps,  I  had 
better  know  the  truth  of  things)  and  said:  'The  negotiation  with 
your  father  has  not  succeeded.  To  end  further  importunities, 
the  Captain  and  his  regiment  quit  Munich  this  morning,  to 
have  their  residence  in  the  country.  And  I  only  am  left  to  tell 
you/ 

"  While  she  was  yet  speaking,  there  came  a  messenger  from 
Count  Nogarola,  and  said:  'From  letters  just  received,  he  finds 
it  necessary  to  set  out  for  Italy  to-night  or  to-morrow  morning, 
and  you  have  only  time  to  return  to  make  preparations." 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  327 

"  While  the  messenger  was  still  speaking,  there  came  also 
another,  and  said  :  '  The  Baron  sends  you  a  paper.'  It  being 
in  English,  I  cast  my  eyes  on  an  article  bearing  the  date  of  New 
York  :  '  Lost,  being  killed  in  a  duel,  Captain  William  Green^ 
one  of  our  most  promising  and  beloved  naval  officers,  barely 
attaining  the  age  of  eighteen.  A  duel  said  to  be  undertaken  to 
vindicate  the  honor  of  a  beloved  sister.  The  sister  is  said  to 
have  had  her  mind  deranged  by  grief  at  the  death  of  her  brother.' 
Knowing  that  the  fond  mother  of  William,  after  his  finishing 
his  studies,  put  him  into  the  navy,  there  could  be  no  doubt  who 
this  officer  was,  or  of  the  identity  of  the  sister.  I  had  heard, 
too,  that  Elenora,  when  quite  a  child,  had  been  pushed  on,  from 
ambition,  to  marry  one  gentleman  while  she  was  particularly 
attached  to  another.  Relating  this  attachment  was  the  cause  of 
the  duel,  as  I  afterwards  learned. 

"  I  was  not,  like  Job  under  accumulated  afflictions,  all  hu- 
mility and  submission ;  nor,  like  his  wife,  with  profligate  re- 
monstrances j  but  rather  listened  within  myself  to  the  precept 
of  Solomon,  that  '  all  is  vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit.' 

"  Having  given  one  parable,  I  shall  give  another.  A  gentle- 
man of  my  acquaintance,  I  will  say,  a  friend,  having  had  and 
lost  two  beloved  wives,  in  the  height  of  his  grief  at  last  declared 
he  would  go  and  live  in  the  burying-ground  with  them.  Being 
asked  with  which  of  them,  he  was  embarrassed  for  an  answer." 

Miss  Sarah  adds  that  she  cannot  say  over  which  of 
her  four  lost  friends  —  including  Elenora  —  she  grieved 
the  most,  but  proceeds  to  describe  the  sorrows  of  the 
day  following,  which  was  begun  by  leave-taking  with 
the  Countess.  She  was  wrought  almost  to  madness, 
and,  seated  alone  on  her  sofa,  her  little  dog  Cora  near  to 
her,  yielded  to  such  passionate  outcries  as  to  lead  her 
maid  to  summon  her  father  into  her  room. 

"  He  came  in  with  his  stately  military  march,  and  seated 
himself.  I  rose  from  my  posture,  taking  Cora  in  my  arms,  and 
considerably  abating  in  my  great  grief,  or,  rather,  in  the  expres- 


328  Life  of  Count  RumforcL 

sion  of  it.  He  said  to  me,  c  You  seem  very  unhappy  ! '  For 
some  time  I  remained  quiet,  then,  thinking  I  had  hit  on  a  good 
answer,  replied,  looking  at  Cora,  c  You  gave  me  this  little  beast. 
Is  it  your  intention  to  take  her  away  from  me  again  ? '  My 
father  rose,  and,  in  quitting  me,  said,  '  I  am  not  the  cause  of 
your  losing  the  Countess.' ' 

The  Count,  to  divert  the  mind  of  his  daughter,  ar- 
ranged another  trip  with  her  which  showed  his  real 
interest  in  her  happiness  and  improvement,  and  also 
afforded  her  enjoyment.  He  had  invited  temporarily 
into  his  family,  M.  Quintin,  one  of  the  French  nobles 
driven  away  from  France  in  the  Revolution.  "He 
had  resided  in  England  and  been  naturalized,  having 
there  taken  the  name  above  given ;  otherwise  he  was 
the  Marquis  of  Chersena  [?],  a  respectable  character;  at 
this  time  not  at  his  ease  in  point  of  property,  but  some 
years  after,  at  the  Restoration,  returning  to  France,  he 
was  -made  Governor  of  the  Tuileries,  as  his  father  had 
been  before  him." 

M.  Quintin  was  about  to  go  to  Vienna.  He  pro- 
posed to  descend  the  Iser  as  far  as  Passau  on  one  of 
the  rafts  by  which  the  country  people  carried  their 
wood  to  market  in  Vienna.  Little  huts  or  shelters 
were  constructed  on  these  rafts  and  made  very  con- 
venient for  travellers.  The  daughter  was  taken  by 
surprise,  one  morning,  by  finding  herself  with  her  father, 
M.  Quintin,  and  servants,  on  one  of  these  rafts,  on 
which  a  hut  had  been  constructed  for  her,  floating  down 
the  river.  They  carried  also  a  curiously  constructed 
Russian  carriage  belonging  to  the  Count.  They  de- 
scended the  Iser  to  its  confluence  with  the  Inn  and  the 
Danube ;  and  there,  bidding  adieu  to  their  friend, 
they  took  post-horses  on  their  way  to  Salzburg  to  see 


Life  of  Count  R^^lnfard.  329 

the  famous  salt-mines,  which  her  father  had  never  visited. 
They  entered  the  mines,  and  examined  the  processes  of 
digging,  manufacture,  caving,  or  bracing  the  passages, 
and  purifying  the  air.  They  also  visited  Berchtes- 
garden  to  see  what  was  then-  the  most  famous  toy- 
manufactory. 

On  her  father's  appointment  as  Minister  Plenipo- 
tentiary from  Bavaria  to  the  Court  of  Great  Britain, 
in  which  office  he  thought  he  should  be  received,  he 
quitted  Munich,  taking  her  with  him.  She  paid  her 
last  respects  to  the  Elector  and  Electrice,  and  to  her 
father's  and  her  own  many  friends.  Of  two  of  her 
friends,  she  says,  she  had  already  taken  a  long  farewell 
in  her  heart.  The  Countess  Nogarola  she  never  saw 
again,  though  she  continued  to  correspond  with  her  till 
the  death  of  that  lady,  not  many  years  after.  As  to 
Count  Taxis,  we  must  have  her  own  words. 

u  On  our  second  day's  journey,  we  having  stopped  at  an  inn, 
as  we  were  getting  into  the  carriage  to  pursue  our  way,  Count 
Taxis  came  up  post-haste  on  horseback  to  meet  us.  Two 
minutes  later,  and  we  should  have  been  gone.  The  Count  bid 
us  both  farewell,  but  in  different  ways.  With  my  father  a 
respectful  bow  and  shake  of  the  hand  ;  with  me,  a  paper  left 
in  my  hand.  It  was  a  great  event ;  for  never  had  I  before  the 
honor  of  receiving  a  line  from  him  or  from  any  one  else,  for  a 
certainty,  of  that  nature.  As  I  already  had  had  my  ears  boxed  on 
account  of  this  gentleman,  I  took  care  not  to  expose  the  letter. 
But  how  to  wait  till  night  before  reading  it  ?  For  we  were  to 
make  no  other  stop  during  the  day.  I  was  compelled  thus  to 
do,  and  had  all  the  time,  in  consequence,  to  ruminate  on  the 
subject  of  the  letter. 

"  Taking  leave  of  friends  being  of  a  melancholy  nature,  I 
took  it  for  granted  the  tenor  of  this  letter  would  wear  that  im- 
pression. I  was  several  times  nearly  affected  to  tears,  to  think 


330  Life  of  Count  JRumfard. 

what  must  have  been  the  Count's  feelings.  '  I  only  flattered 
myself  that  he  attributed  things  to  their  right  causes,  and  did 
not  blame  me.  But  the  moment  at  length  arrived  for  me  to 
read  the  letter,  and  what  was  my  surprise,  on  reading  it,  to  find 
only  a  few  gay  farewell  lines,  with  neither  regrets  nor  melan- 
choly !  Had  he  not  himself  given  me  the  letter,  I  should  not 
have  believed  he  wrote  it.  The  only  thing  bordering  on  civility 
was,  that  the  Countess  told  him  to  cherish  the  hope  of  my 
return,  and  which  method  he  had  adopted. 

"  In  order  not  to  make  Count  Taxis  appear  unfriendly  or 
deceiving,  as  I  do  not  think  him  so,  I  must  observe  that  several 
times,  through  the  Countess,  with  whom  I  was  in  constant 
correspondence,  I  had  little  messages  to  convince  me  I  was  not 
forgotten.  As  I  shall  not  again  have  occasion  to  speak  of  this 
gentleman,  I  will  here  mention  his  unfortunate,  untimely  end. 
Both  he  and  Lieutenant  Spreti,  my  father's  other  aide-de-camp^ 
lost  their  lives  in  Bonaparte's  campaigns  in  Russia.  The  Ba- 
varians at  that  time  lost  thirty  thousand  men." 

Taking  the  route  through  Hamburg,  for  the  same 
reason  which  had  led  them  to  enter  Germany  by  that 
way,  the  party  had  a  most  disagreeable,  and  even  perilous 
journey.  The  distractions  of  a  state  of  war  had  de- 
moralized even  the  quiet  and  honest  peasantry,  multi- 
plying freebooters,  and  exposing  travellers  on  neglected 
and  dangerous  highways  and  byways  to  great  risks  of 
violence.  Robberies  and  murders  were  frequent  on  all 
sides.  The  inns  and  public-houses  were  wretched  and 
unsafe.  The  Count,  his  daughter,  and  servants  were 
often  obliged  to  sleep  in  their  carriages,  in  which  they 
met  with  two  accidents  that  caused  them  much  alarm. 
On  one  occasion,  passing  a  bridge  without  a  parapet, 
the  horses,  seized  with  a  fit  of  backing,  came  near  pre- 
cipitating them  over  a  frightful  precipice.  While  the 
Count  put  his  head  out  on  one  side  to  warn  the  coach- 


Life  of  Count  Rum  ford.  331 

man,  Miss  Sarah  jumped  out  safely  on  the  other  side. 
She  says  her  father  used  often  to  describe  the  incident 
to  his  friends,  as  proof  that  she  knew  how  to  take  care 
of  herself.  As  the  cost  of  exchange  on  London  would 
have  caused  a  heavy  loss  on  paper  money,  the  Count 
was  obliged  to  take  with  him  a  bag  of  coin  so  heavy  as 
to  require  aid  from  others  to  lift  it.  This  was  a  source 
of  constant  anxiety,  whether  in  the  carriage,  by  day  or 
night,  or  when  taken  into  a  room  at  an  inn. 

They  passed  safely  through  all  their  perils,  and  to 
the  delight  of  the  young  lady,  who,  though  she  had 
enjoyed  much  in  Germany,  was  a  dear  lover  of  Eng- 
land, they  reached  London.  The  father,  on  finding  that 
as  a  born  British  subject  he  could  not  be  received 
in  a  diplomatic  capacity,  decided  not  to  return  to  Ba- 
varia, where  war  and  distraction  were  so  unfavorable  to 
the  pursuits  which  now  chiefly  engaged  him.  Not 
being  in  good  health,  he  purchased  a  villa  at  Brompton 
Row,  Knightsbridge,  near  London,  because  of  its  salu- 
brious situation,  and  here  his  daughter  lived  with  him 
quite  happily  for  a  year.  While  the  Count  was  busy- 
ing himself  with  the  plan  and  initiation  of  the  Royal 
Institution,  and  in  all  the  intercourse,  social  and  scien- 
tific, with  the  most  distinguished  men  in  and  around 
the  capital  which  was  so  freely  open  to  him,  his 
daughter  had  her  own  resources.  She  describes  with 
great  animation  her  delight  in  English  comforts,  re- 
finements, and  festivities.  Especially  is  she  ardent  and 
eloquent  in  her  tribute  to  Lady  Palmerston  as  a  lovely 
woman,  a  faithful  mother,  and  a  notable  housekeeper. 
Miss  Sarah  was  cordially  received  at  the  three  resi- 
dences of  Lord  Palmerston,  —  Hanover  Square,  Broad- 
lands,  and  Sheene.  At  Broadlands,  during  the  Christ- 


332  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

mas  festivities,  she  says  that  she  "  met  some  of  the  first 
people  in  the  world,"  and  the  only  language  which  she 
can  find  adequate  for  describing  the  way  in  which  Lady 
Palmerston  did  the  honors  is  by  saying  "  that  in  all 
probability  there  was  nothing  else  to  be  found  to  match 
it  in  the  whole  world." 

But  the  daughter's  troubles  in  affairs  of  the  heart 
seem  to  have  in  some  degree  qualified  her  enjoyment 
in  England  likewise,  as  she  and  her  father  were  not  in 
accord  about  any  tentative  suitors.  The  following  ac- 
count has  an  air  of  candor,  and  engages  a  degree  of 
sympathy  for  Miss  Sarah,  now  in  her  twenty-fifth  year. 

"  When  my  father  was  engaged  in  dining  out  where  he  could 
not  take  me,  Sir  Charles  Blagden,  one  of  his  most  intimate 
associates,  would  be  invited  to  dine  with  me,  en  tete-a-tete,  i.  e. 
in  friendly  chat.  Sir  Charles  was  a  bachelor,  not  so  old  as 
my  father,  but  not  young.  After  we  went  to  Germany,  he 
wrote  to  my  father  to  say  that  he  liked  me  well  enough  to  make 
a  wife  of  me,  requesting  that  favor. 

"  My  father  was  ingenious.  He  did  not  wish  it,  yet  how 
affront  such  a  friend?  His  proceedings  were  thus:  He  would 
often  turn  the  conversation  on  this  gentleman,  relating  anec- 
dotes not  of  a  nature  to  enchant  a  young  person,  without  saying 
that  he  had  written  about  me.  After  which,  the  truth  coming 
out,  I  was  desired  to  give  my  decision.  I,  of  course,  was 
shocked  that  the  thing  should  be  mentioned.  This  did  not 
prevent  all  three  of  us  being  excellent  friends  when  we  met 
again.  Sir  Charles  told  me  one  day  he  liked  me  better  than 
he  did  my  father,  which  I  thought  a  great  compliment.  My 
father  was  not  a  bit  jealous.  He  would  say  we  were  just  alike. 
We  were  all  happy,  had  we  but  have  known  it.  But  we  were 
to  separate,  —  I  returning  to  America  ;  my  father  going  to 
France,  where  he  married  Madame  Lavoisier,  who  did  not 
wish  a  daughter-in-law,  which  kept  me  in  America." 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  333 

Before  she  left  her  father  she  describes  him  as  suffer- 
ing much  from  ill  health.  He  put  himself  under  the 
care  of  the  celebrated  Dr.  Ash,  and  had  recourse  to  the 
waters  of  various  mineral  springs.  He  altered  and 
fitted  up  his  house  at  Brompton  in  such  an  ingenious 
way,  and  with  such  contrivances  and  arrangements,  as 
to  make  it  an  attraction  for  many  curious  persons  to 
visit.  The  daughter's  return  to  America  at  this  time 
was  not  caused,  as  the  last  extract  would  seem  to  imply, 
by  her  father's  second  marriage,  which  did  not  take 
place  till  some  years  subsequently.  He  was  offered  a 
very  honorable  position  and  employment  in  England, 
but  felt  bound,  after  this  residence  there  of  a  year,  to 
return  to  Germany. 

The  appointment  of  Envoy  Extraordinary  and  Min- 
ister Plenipotentiary  from  Bavaria  to  the  Court  of  Lon- 
don, which  Count  Rumford  had  received  from  the 
Elector,  was  an  honor  conferred  upon  him  for  several 
reasons.  The  zeal  and  activity  with  which  the  Count 
had  devoted  himself  to  so  many  forms  of  public  service 
had  again  seriously  overtasked  him,  and  had  greatly 
impaired  his  health.  He  had  also  encountered  much 
and  very  disagreeable  opposition  from  jealous  or  inter- 
ested parties,  the  effects  of  which  began  to  tell  painfully 
on  his  temper  and  cheerfulness  of  spirits.  It  is  notice- 
able, however,  as  a  marked  and  praiseworthy  quality  in 
his  character,  that  he  made  but  infrequent,  and  then 
always  guarded  and  dignified,  reference  to  the  public  or 
private  enmities  excited  against  him  by  the  splendid 
success  of  his  career  and  the  efficient  wording  of  his 
schemes.  When  thwarted  in  one  of  them,  he  makes 
this  general  reference  to  such  opposition,  in  speaking 
of  "  the  malicious  insinuations  of  persons  who,  from 


334  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

motives  too  obvious,  took  great  pains  to  render  abor- 
tive every  public  undertaking  in  which  I  have  been 
engaged."  But  the  confidence,  esteem,  and  gratitude 
of  the  Elector  never  failed  him.  While  desirous  that 
he  should  not  succumb  under  such  severe  work,  nor  be 
crossed  and  irritated  by  opposition,  the  Elector  was 
intent  upon  securing  for  him  the  rest  and  relief  of  which 
he  had  need  without  depriving  himself  entirely  of  the 
Count's  services.  The  latter,  as  we  have  seen,  taking 
his  daughter  with  him,  went  to  England,  arriving  in 
London  near  the  end  of  September,  1798,  in  the  full 
belief  that  he  would  be  received  in  his  high  diplomatic 
office.  But  the  fact  of  his  birth  as  a  British  subject, 
which  had  heretofore  been  so  signal  a  condition  of  his 
advancement,  now  withstood  the  gratification  of  his  am- 
bition. Usage  did  not  permit  that  a  native  subject  of 
the  king  of  England  should  be  accredited  as  a  foreign 
minister. 

It  had  proved  a  severe  trial  of  English  magnanimity 
to  accept  that  arch-rebel  John  Adams  in  his  diplomatic 
capacity  from  the  new  American  people.  But  the 
inevitable  condition  was  that  the  United  States  could 
have  no  representative  at  the  British  Court,  at  least  for 
a  generation  to  come,  unless  the  mother  country  would 
receive  as  such  a  born  subject  of  the  realm. 

It  would  have  presented  a  yet  more  curious  problem 
for  the  British  government,  if  Rumford,  on  a  tempo- 
rary visit  to  his  native  country,  had  been  recognized  as 
a  citizen,  and  then  sent  in  a  diplomatic  capacity  to  the 
Court  of  St.  James. 

As  this  diplomatic  appointment  was  of  itself  a  proud 
distinction,  and  one  of  the  most  interesting  incidents  in 
Count  Rumford's  singularly  eminent  career;  and  as  the 


Life  of  Co^lnt  Rumford.  335 

honor  of  the  office,  with  the  prospective  social  position 
which  it  would  secure  him,  was  evidently  highly  prized 
by  him,  as  also  the  discomfiture  which  he  experienced 
in  his  disappointment  was  equally  great,  —  I  am  glad 
to  be  able  to  give  an  authentic  statement  of  particulars 
concerning  it.* 

The  Elector  of  Bavaria  had  offered  the  position  of 
Minister  at  the  English  court  to  Count  Rumford  as 
the  successor  of  Count  Haslang,  who  had  retired  after 
having  held  the  office  very  many  years.  The  appoint- 
ment of  Rumford  being  known  in  England  before  his 
arrival,  Lord  Grenville,  on  the  I4th  of  September, 
1798,  sent  a  despatch  to  the  Hon.  Arthur  Paget,  the 
English  Minister  at  Munich,  as  follows  :  — 


"DOWNING  STREET,  Septr  14,  1798. 

"  HoNb!e  ARTHUR  PAGET. 

"  SIR,  —  His  Majesty  has  seen,  with  some  surprise,  in  the 
late  dispatches  from  Mr  Shepherd,  which  I  have  had  the  hon- 
our to  lay  before  him,  that  the  Elector  of  Bavaria  has  nomi- 
nated Count  Rumford  to  succeed  Count  Haslang  as  His  Elec- 
toral Highness's  Minister  at  this  Court.  It  is,  I  apprehend,  a 
thing  if  not  wholly  unprecedented,  at  least  extremely  unusual, 
to  appoint  a  subject  of  the  Country  to  reside  at  the  Court  of  his 
natural  Sovereign  in  the  character  of  Minister  from  a  Foreign 
Prince.  And  I  am  to  direct  you  to  lose  no  time  in  apprizing 
the  Ministers'of  his  Electoral  Highness  that  such  an  appoint- 
ment, in  the  person  of  Count  Rumford,  would  be  by  no  means 
agreeable  to  His  Majesty,  and  that  His  Majesty  relies,  therefore, 
on  the  friendship  and  good  understanding  which  has  always 
hitherto  subsisted  between  Himself  and  the  Elector  of  Bavaria, 
that  His  Highness  will  have  no  hesitation  in  withdrawing  it,  arid 

*  I  am  indebted  to  the  kindness  of  Dr.  H.  Bence  Jones  in  procuring  for  me  from 
the  late  Lord  Clarendon,  but  a  few  days  before  his  decease,  copies  of  papers  from  the 
Foreign  Office  relating  to  this  incident. 


336  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

nominating  as  His  Minister  some  Person  to  whom  the  objection 
here  stated  does  not  apply. 

"  There  cannot  be  the  least  doubt  but  that  the  Elector  will 
consent  to  this  request  the  moment  that  it  is  suggested,  and 
that  the  reasons  upon  which  it  is  founded  are  pointed  out  to  his 
observation.  But  should  there  unexpectedly  arise  any  difficulty 
about  a  compliance  with  a  Request  which  His  Majesty  is  so 
clearly  warranted  in  making,  I  am  to  direct  you,  in  the  last 
Resort,  to  state  in  distinct  terms  that  His  Majesty  will  by  no 
means  consent  to  receive  Count  Rumford  in  the  character 
which  has  been  assigned  to  him. 

"  Should  anything  be  said  of  the  Harshness  of  requiring  the 
recall  of  a  Minister  already  appointed,  and  actually  set-out  (as 
Count  Rumford  is  understood  to  be)  for  the  place  of  his  desti- 
nation, you  will  not  fail  to  answer,  that,  had  the  usual  notifica- 
tion of  an  Intention  to  appoint  a  new  Minister  to  this  Court 
been  previously  made  here,  and  the  name  of  the  person  destined 
to  his  Employment  mentioned  to  His  Majesty  (an  attention  which 
might  reasonably  have  been  Expected  upon  an  appointment  so 
unusual  in  its  circumstances)  His  Majesty  would  then  have  been 
able  to  state  his  objection  without  risking  any  Eclat,  or  appearing 
to  compromise  the  personal  character  of  the  Gentleman  whom 
His  Majesty  declines  receiving. 

"  Instructions  are  sent  (by  the  Same  Post  with  this  letter)  to 
Sir  James  Craufurd  at  Hamburgh  to  communicate  privately 
to  Count  Rumford,  on  his  arrival  at  that  place,  the  nature  of 
the  Representation  which  you  are  directed  to  make  at  Munich, 
and  to  dissuade  him  from  prosecuting  his  journey  to  England. 

"  In  addition  to  the  general  arguments  against  this  appoint- 
ment, as  applying  to  any  Person,  a  subject  of  His  Majesty,  you 
will  observe  that  the  circumstances  of  Count  Rumford's  having 
heretofore  filled  a  confidential  Situation  (that  of  Under-Secretary 
of  State  in  the  American  Department)  under  His  Majesty's 
Gov1  makes  the  appointment  in  his  Person  peculiarly  improper 
and  objectionable." 

The   next  day   Lord   Grenville   addressed  to   Count 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  337 

Haslang,  late    Bavarian    Minister,   a    note   in   French, 
of  which  the   following  is   a   translation  :  — 

"DOWNING  STREET,  I5th  September,  1798. 

"Lord  Grenville  presents  his  compliments  to  Count  Haslang, 
and  has  the  honour  to  assure  him  of  the  pleasure  with  which  he 
learns  that  the  matter  in  question,  referred  to  in  the  note  of  the 
Count,  has  been  disposed  of  to  his  satisfaction. 

u  Lord  Grenville  desires,  likewise,  to  express  to  the  Count  his 
regrets  at  having  been  deprived  of  the  opportunity  of  communi- 
cating with  him  on  affairs  of  the  court.  By  the  note  which,  on 
account  of  the  absence  of  the  Count,  Lord  Grenville  sent  to 
his  house,  he  had  invited  him  to  call  upon  him  in  order  that 
Lord  Grenville  might  impart  to  him  the  decision  of  his  Majesty 
on  the  subject  of  the  nomination  of  Count  Rumford.  But, 
Count  Haslang  being  absent,  the  same  communication  has 
been  made  directly  to  Count  Rumford." 


[Count  Rumford  to  Lord  Grenville.] 

"  MY  LORD,  —  Notwithstanding  the  .information  and  the 
intimation  your  Lordship  has  caused  to  be  communicated  to 
me  by  Mr.  Canning,  Under-Secretary  of  State  in  the  Depart- 
ment of  Foreign  Affairs,  I  conceive  it  to  be  my  duty  formally 
to  notify  to  your  Lordship  that  His  most  Serene  Electoral 
Highness,  the  Elector  Palatine,  Reigning  Duke  of  Bavaria,  my 
most  gracious  Master,  having  been  pleased  to  appoint  me  to  be 
His  Envoy  Extraordinary  and  Minister  Plenipotentiary  at  the 
Court  of  His  Majesty  the  King  of  Great  Britain,  I  have  come 
to  England  in  consequence  of  that  appointment,  and  of  the 
Orders  and  Instructions  of  His  most  Serene  Electoral  Highness; 
and  am  charged  with  a  Letter  from  His  most  Serene  Elec- 
toral Highness  to  the  King  ;  which  Letter,  agreeably  to  the 
Instructions  I  have  received,  I  ought  to  endeavour  to  obtain 
permission  to  deliver  to  His  Majesty  with  my  own  hands. 

"Being  thus  circumstanced,  your  Lordship  will,  no  doubt,  see 

22 


238  Life  of  Co^lnt  Rumford. 

the  propriety  and  the  necessity  of  my  asking  an  Audience  or 
personal  interview  with  your  Lordship,  which  I  now  do,  in 
order  that  I  may  have  an  Opportunity  of  stating  to  your  Lord- 
ship more  fully  the  objects  of  the  Mission  with  which  I  am 
charged,  and  of  receiving  from  your  Lordship  such  information 
on  that  subject  as  may  enable  me  to  give  a  clear,  authentic,  and 
satisfactory  account  of  the  success  of  that  Mission  to  the 
Sovereign  who  has  deigned  to  entrust  me  with  the  management 
of  his  Affairs  at  this  Court. 

"  Requesting  that  your  Lordship  would  be  pleased  to  inform 
me  when  and  where  I  may  have  the  honour  of  waiting  on  you, 

"  I  have  the  honour,  &c. 
[Signed]  « RUMFORD. 

"LONDON,  igth  September,  1798. 

[Copy.-] 
[Lord  Grenville  to  Count  Rumford.] 

"DOWNING  STREET,  Septr  2ist,  1798. 

"  COUNT  RUMFORD. 

"  SIR,  —  In  conformity  to  the  Communication  which  Mr. 
Canning  has  already  made  to  you,  I  have  now  the  honour  to 
enclose  an  extract  of  the  Instruction  which,  by  His  Majesty's 
command,  I  transmitted  to  Mr.  Paget  .immediately  on  His  Maj- 
esty's receiving  the  Information  of  your  nomination  to  succeed 
Count  Haslang. 

u  You  will  not  fail  to  observe  that  the  Representation  which 
Mr.  Paget  was  directed  to  make  on  this  Subject  rested  wholly 
on  the  circumstance,  of  the  decisive  objection  which  His  Majesty 
feels  against  receiving  as  a  public  Minister  accredited  from  An- 
other Sovereign,  a  Person  who  is  not  only  a  subject  of  His  Maj- 
esty, but  has  actually  been  employed  in  a  Confidential  situation 
under  His  Majesty's  Governm*.  His  Majesty  had  graciously 
been  pleased  to  express  His  wish  that  this  Intimation  should 
reach  you  before  you  set  out  for  England,  in  order  to  avoid  the 
Inconvenience  to  which  you  might  otherwise  be  exposed.  With 
this  View  the  Instruction  sent  to  Mr.  Paget  was  accompanied  by 
a  Despatch  transmitted  by  the  same  post  to  Hamburgh,  in  which 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  339 

His  Majesty's  Minister  at  that  place  was  directed  to  communi- 
cate to  you  privately,  on  your  arrival  there,  the  nature  of  the 
Representation  to  be  made  by  Mr.  Paget. 

"  As  this  course  has  been  precluded  by  your  actual  arrival  in 
London,  and  as  you  have  been  apprized  here  of  the  circum- 
stance in  question,  I  conceive  it  will  be  more  agreeable  to  you 
that  the  substance  of  the  Representation  with  which  Mr.  Paget 
was  charged,  should  be  transmitted  by  you  to  the  Elector, 
rather  than  thro'  any  other  channel.  With  this  view  I  shall 
acquaint  Mr.  Paget,  that  he  may  forbear  to  execute  his  In- 
structions, except  in  so  far  as  relates  to  the  assurances  to  be 
given  to  H.  E.  H.  of  His  Majesty's  constant  and  Invariable 
Friendship,  &  of  His  Willingness  to  receive  as  His  Electoral 
Highness's  Minister  any  Person  whose  nomination  is  not  liable 
to  objections  as  strong  as  those  which  I  have  already  stated." 


"  DOWNING  STREET,  Septr  ai,  1798. 

"  HoNble  ARTHUR  PAGET. 

"  SIR,  —  Count  Rumford  being  arrived  in  London  and  hav- 
ing been  apprized  of  the  objections  which  His  Majesty  had 
stated  to  receiving  him  in  the  Character  of  Minister  from  the 

o 

Elector  of  Bavaria;  and  having  undertaken  to  transmit  to  His 
Electoral  Highness  a  statement  of  the  grounds  upon  which 
these  objections  are  founded,  I  have  written  to  him  a  letter,  a 
copy  of  which  I  herewith  Inclose,  and  in  conformity  to  which 
you  will  be  pleased  to  regulate  ygur  conduct  on  the  subject  of 
the  Instructions  contained  in  my  Dispatch  of  the  I4th  Instant. 

Count  Rumford  was  then  forty-five  years  old.  A 
portrait  in  oil,  now  in  the  possession  of  Joseph  B. 
Walker,  of  Concord,  N.  H.,  had  been  taken  of  him 
at  or  about  that  time.  It  presents  a  man  of  fine  appear- 
ance, with  imposing  presence  and  beautiful  features. 
An  engraving  from  it  serves  as  the  frontispiece  to  this 
volume. 

Of  course,   therefore,  the  Count  never  exercised  the 


34°  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

diplomatic  office,  but  lived  as  a  private  person.  He 
acted,  however,  as  the  agent  of  Charles  Theodore,  the 
Elector,  and  when  another  minister  was  appointed 
was  on  most  intimate  terms  with  him.  The  Bavarian 
army,  then  in  the  interest  of  Austria,  was  in  the  pay 
of  England.  I  shall  have  occasion  by  and  by  to  quote 
the  statement  of  the  daughter  that  her  father  felt  deeply 
chagrined  at  the  foiling  of  his  passion  for  official  dis- 
tinction experienced  in  his  respectful  rejection  as  the 
Bavarian  ambassador.  That  he  soon  found  full  occupa- 
tion in  an  enterprise  which,  if  for  the  time  it  attached 
to  him  less  of  personal  distinction,  was  to  insure  a 
permanent  honor  to  his  name,  may  have  decided  him 
to  remain  in  England  and  bear  his  disappointment. 
Probably  he  learned  even  before  his  arrival  that  there 
was  an  obstacle  to  his  reception  in  the  character  in 
which  he  came,  for,  as  will  appear  from  a  letter  of  his, 
soon  to  be  given,  he  proposed  at  this  time  to  make 
another  effort  to  visit  America. 

The  following  letters  were  addressed  to  him  by  Colo- 
nel Baldwin  on  dates  previous  to  his  leaving  Munich. 

"  WOBURN,  July  31,  1798. 

"  MY  DEAR  COUNT,  —  Mr.  Welsh,  a  son  of  Dr.  Welsh  of 
Boston,  sets  out  to-morrow  morning  for  Newburyport,  from 

whence  he  expects  to  embark  for ,  in  order  to  proceed 

to  Berlin,  the  capital  of  the  Prussian  dominions,  where  he  is 
to  officiate  as  secretary  to  the  Hon.  Mr.  Adams,  the  American 
Minister  at  that  court. 

"  The  young  gentleman  is  of  a  very  respectable  family  and 
sustains  an  exceedingly  good  character.  He  will  be  the  bearer 
of  a  number  of  letters  to  you  and  the  Countess,  your  daughter, 
to  whose  attention  I  beg  leave  to  recommend  him,  and  any 
civility  with  which  you  may  please  to  notice  him  will  add  to  the 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  341 

numerous  favors  which  I  have  already  received.     I  am,  with  the 
greatest  respect  and  esteem, 

"  Your  most  obedient  and  very  humble  servant, 

"LOAMMI  BALDWIN. 

"  SIR  BENJAMIN,  Count  of  Rumford." 

"  WOBURN,  July  31,  1798. 

"  MY  DEAR  COUNT,  —  I  have  time  by  Mr.  Welsh  just  to 
acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your  favors  of  the  jyth  of  Decem- 
ber and  the  yth  of  January  last.  Mr.  Welsh,  whom  I  have 
taken  the  liberty  to  recommend  to  your  notice,  will  be  the 
bearer  of  this  and  a  number  of  other  letters  which  should  have 
been  forwarded  long  ago,  but  I  must  beg  you  to  excuse  it.  For 
reasons  which  I  shall  give  you  at  another  time,  they  have  been 
delayed. 

"  I  have,  agreeably  to  your  desire,  attended  to  the  various 
objects  you  have  mentioned  in  your  letter  of  the  lyth  of  De- 
cember last,  and  have  them  all  in  train,  and  hope  soon  to  effect 
them  agreeably  to  your  wishes.  I  happened  to  see  Mr.  Rolfe 
as  he  was  on  a  journey,  and  had  a  pretty  full  conversation  with 
him.  He  seems  desirous  of  meeting  you  on  the  terms  proposed, 
and  acknowledged  them  generous,  yet  seemed  to  hesitate  a  little 
on  account  of  some  administration  accounts  with  Judge  Walker. 
However,  he  concluded  to  take  a  little  more  time  to  consider 
and  write  me,  but  has  not  done  it  yet. 

"I  have  seen  Judge  Walker  since.  He  tells  me  that  the 
accounts  referred  to  above  will  be  closed  the  beginning  of.  Au- 
gust next.  He  is  very  willing  to  do  everything  you  wish  on  his 
part,  but  thinks  your  daughter  should  give  him  some  kind  of  a 
discharge  when  the  business  is  closed. 

"  I  have  no  doubt,  from  what  I  learn  from  those  gentlemen  of 
Concord  whom  I  have  conversed  with  on  the  subject  of  the 
Countess  of  Rumford's  benevolent  donation,  but  that  it  will 
be  most  cordially  received.  The  Mrs.  Nowell  whom  you 
mention  is  dead.  Your  dear  mother  was  with  us  here  last 
week,  in  fine  health  for  a  lady  of  her  years,  and  looks  just  as 
she  used  to  do.  She  desires  to  be  remembered  to  you  and  your 
daughter.  Friends  in  general  well. 


34 2  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  I  shall  write  you  more  fully,  and  I  hope  more  satisfactorily, 
in  a  few  days.  Give  my  love  to  the  Countess,  and  tell  her  that 
I  thank  her  most  sincerely  for  her  successful  endeavor  in  per- 
suading her  dear  father  to  make  a  visit  to  his  native  country. 
We  long  for  the  time  to  come  that  we  may  see  him  here.  We 
rejoice  to  hear  the  resolution  you  have  taken,  and  sincerely  hope 
no  event  will  happen  to  prevent  it. 

"  I  am,  with  much  respect,  my  dear  Count, 

"  Your  most  obedient  and  very  humble  servant, 

"LOAMMI    BALDWIN. 

"  SIR  BENJAMIN,  Count  Rumford." 

Colonel  Baldwin,  in  a  business  letter,  communicated 
to  Count  Rumford' s  mother,  now  advanced  far  in 
years,  the  prospect  of  seeing  her  son  in  his  native  coun- 
try. She  was  then  residing  with  her  husband,  in  Flints- 
town,  Me. 

"WOBURN,   AugUSt  23,    1798. 

"  DEAR  MADAM,  —  I  have  just  received  instructions  from 
your  son,  the  Count  of  Rumford,  to  draw  on  his  agents,  Sir 
Robert  Herries  &  Co.,  in  London,  for  =£30  sterling,  it  being 
for  the  amount  of  his  daughter  Sarah's  draft  on  Edward  Arm- 
strong, Esq.,  his  former  agent,  dated  October  23,  1795,  that 
was  protested,  &c.  Which  bills,  or  the  money  therefor,  to- 
gether with  another  set,  dated  the  26th  day  of  March  last  of 
the  same  amount,  are  now  ready  to  be  delivered  to  you  or  your 
order,  agreeably  to  the  provision  your  son  has  made.  I  hope 
you  will  soon  have  a  convenient  opportunity  to  send  for  it,  as  I 
know  of  none  at  present  by  which  I  can  send  to  you. 

"I  have  lately  received  communications  dated  the  lyth  De- 
cember, 1797,  from  the  Count,  upon  various  subjects,  one  of 
which  is  respecting  a  visit  to  America  that  he  with  his  daugh- 
ter proposes  to  make  in  about  fifteen  or  sixteen  months  from 
the  date  of  his  letter,  if  peace  shall  be  restored  and  the  state  of 
affairs  in  Europe  will  admit  of  it,  which  he  expects  to  be  the 
case.  I  pray  God  to  grant  it  may  be  so. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  343 

"  Mrs.    Baldwin  joins  with  me  in  love  and  respects  to  you 
and  Mr.  Pierce,  and  all  your  children. 
"  I  am,  dear  madam, 

"  Your  obedient,  and  very  humble  servant, 

"LOAMMI   BALDWIN. 
"  MRS.  RUTH  PIERCE." 

At  the  time  of  writing  the  following  letter,  it  would 
seem  that  Count  Rumford,  though  he  had  been  in 
England  but  a  week,  must  have  been  made  aware  that 
the  objections  to  his  reception  as  the  Bavarian  Am- 
bassador could  not  be  removed ;  for  he  could  hardly 
have  contemplated  even  a  visit  to  America,  unless  he 
had  looked  for  but  a  brief  tenure  of  office,  if  allowed  to 
hold  it. 

"LONDON,  2,8th  Sept.,  1798. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  arrived  in  this  City  last  week  from 
Germany,  and  I  expect  to  be  able  to  remain  here  several 
months.  I  have,  indeed,  some  hopes  of  being  able  to  pay  you  a 
visit  in  America  in  the  Spring.  But  these  hopes,  though  ap- 
parently well  founded,  may  easily  be  disappointed,  for  there  are 
several  events,  none  of  which  are  very  improbable,  that  would 
render  it  impossible  for  me  to  be  absent  from  Europe  next  year. 
It  is,  however,  my  fixed  intention  to  pay  a  visit  to  my  friends  in 
America  as  soon  as  ever  it  shall  be  in  my  power,  which  most 
probably  will  be  in  the  course  of  a  year  or  two.  I  have  even  a 
scheme  of  forming  for  myself  a  little  quiet  retreat  in  that  coun- 
try, to  which  I  can  retire  at  some  future  period,  and  spend  the 
evening  of  my  life.  Perhaps  you  may  be  so  good  as  to  assist 
me  in  carrying  this  plan  into  execution.  As  I  am  not  wealthy, 
and  prefer  comfort  to  splendour,  I  shall  not  want  anything 
magnificent.  From  forty  to  one  hundred  Acres  of  good  land, 
with  wood  and  water  belonging  to  it,  if  possible  in  a  retired 
situation,  from  one  to  four  miles  from  Cambridge,  with  or 
without  a  neat,  comfortable  house  upon  it,  would  satisfy  all  my 
wishes. 


344  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  Do  you  know  of  anything  of  this  description  that  is  to  be 
bought  ?  And  how  much  would  it  cost  ?  I  should  want  noth- 
ing from  the  land  but  pleasure-grounds,  and  grass  for  my  cows 
and  horses,  and  extensive  kitchen  garden  and  fruit  garden.  I 
should  wish  much  for  a  few  acres  of  wood,  and  also  for  a  stream 
of  fresh  water,  or  for  a  large  Pond,  or  the  neighbourhood  of  one, 
for  without  shady  trees  and  water  there  can  be  no  rural  beauty. 
What  is  land  an  Acre  in  the  situation  above  mentioned  ?  What 
near  the  road  ?  What  at  the  distance  of  half  a  mile  from  it  ? 
What  are  the  taxes  I  should  pay  in  your  country  ?  Could  I,  as 
a  stranger,  purchase  and  hold  an  Estate  ?  I  should  be  much 
obliged  to  you,  my  Dear  Sir,  if  you  would  give  me  information 
and  advice  on  these  various  subjects.  I  need  not  tell  you  how 
much  it  would  tend  to  increase  my  enjoyments  to  live  in  your 
neighbourhood.  My  Daughter  is  quite  enchanted  with  the 
scheme,  and  never  ceases  to  urge  me  to  execute  it  as  soon  as 
possible,  and  on  her  account  I  am  anxious  to  engage  in  it.  I 
wish  to  leave  her  a  home,  something  immoveable  that  she  may 
call  her  own,  as  well  as  the  means  of  subsistence,  at  my  death. 
And  I  am  not  surprised  nor  displeased  to  find  that  she  prefers 
her  native  country  to  every  other. 

"  To  own  the  truth,  I  am  quite  of  her  opinion  on  that  sub- 
ject. She  desires  her  best  compliments  to  you  and  to  your 
Lady.  She  is  very  grateful  to  you  for  all  your  goodness  to  her. 
It  is  now  a  great  while  indeed  since  I  heard  from  you.  Pray 
write  me  soon,  and  believe  me,  ever, 

"  Yours  most  affectionately, 

«  RUMFORD. 

"  To  the  Honb!e  LOAMMI  BALDWIN, 


u  When    you  write    to    me,  please   to  address  your   Letters 
thus:  — 

"  Count  Rumford,  to  the  Care  of  Messrs. 
Herries,  Farquhar,  &  Co.,  Bankers,  St.  James  St.,  London." 

("  Received  at  Woburn,  by  hand  of  Dr.  Walter.")  *    . 

A  letter  written  by   Miss  Sarah  at    this  time  shows 


Life  of  Coiint  Riunford. 

her  keenness  of  discernment,  and  her  frankness  in  ex- 
pressing the  results  of  it. 

"  LONDON,  24th  October,  1798. 
Brompton  Row. 

"  MY  DEAR  MRS.  BALDWIN,  —  Though  I  was  very  sorry 
and  much  disappointed  at  no.t  hearing  from  you  sooner,  yet  your 
letter,  when  it  did  arrive,  gave  me  much  pleasure.  I  am  even 
disposed  to  make  every  apology  for  your  long  silence  you  could 
wish.  Indeed,  I  think  the  situation  in  which  you  are,  and  the 
variety  of  domestic  affairs  which  you  have  to  take  up  your  time 
and  attention,  is  a  sufficient  excuse  for  not  writing  sooner. 
I  am  glad,  however,  to  hear  that  your  health  is  good,  as  like- 
wise the  health  of  that  said  friend  of  yours,  —  who  is  very 
naughty  to  be  absent  so  much,  and  leave  all  the  cares  of  the 
family  to  you.  Oh  !  those  gentlemen  of  business  seem  odd 
things  to  us  who  have  no  further  ideas  of  riches  and  honor  and 
glory  than  a  decent  comfortable  living  and  a  good  reputation. 

"  But  I  should  not  venture  to  write  in  this  manner  to  you 
did  I  not  perfectly  remember  that  we  used  to  be  just  of  the 
same  opinion  upon  these  subjects.  I  do  not  know  what  you 
have  done,  but  I  have  not  yet  found  reason  to  alter  my  opinion  ; 
and,  to  let  you  into  a  secret,  I  have  since  learned  to  know  more 
about  the  consequences  of  living  with  a  man  of  business.  I 
have  found  a  very  good  father,  but  who  is  likewise  prodigiously 
occupied  in  public  affairs.  Had  I  acquired  his  fortune  and  half 
his  renown  (for  between  you  and  me,  let  me  tell  you  that 
neither  Colonel  Baldwin  nor  my  father  is  an  enemy  to  a  little 
well-deserved  ren.own),  I  should  think  myself  happy,  and  should 
go  and  settle  down  in  some  little  corner  of  the  world,  and 
endeavor  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of  my  labor. 

"  Believe  me  your  most  affectionate  and  sincere  friend, 

"S.  RUMFORD. 

"  MRS.  BALDWIN,  care  of  LOAMMI  BALDWIN,  ESQ/' 

The  revival  and  circulation  in  America  of  the  report 
that  Count  Rumford,  supposed  to  have  finally  left  the 
service  of  Bavaria,  intended  to  return  to  his  native 


346  Life  of  Count  Rtmford. 

country,  met  here  a  hearty  interest  with  his  many 
friends.  He  had  already  begun  to  receive  in  America 
marks  of  public  regard.  Judge  Tudor,  one  of  the 
founders  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  the 
oldest  in  the  country,  having  nominated  Count  Rum- 
ford  as  a  corresponding  member,  he  was  elected  as  such 
at  a  meeting  of  the  Society  on  January  30,  1798.  The 
following  cordial  letter  was  received1  from  him  in  re- 
sponse, and  having  been  read  at  a  meeting  of  the  So- 
ciety on  July  19,  1798,  by  the  Corresponding  Secretary, 
it  was  voted  that  it  be  published  in  one  of  the  Boston 
papers,  and  that  a  set  of  the  Collections  of  the  Soci- 
ety, handsomely  bound  in  four  volumes,  be  sent  to  the 
Count.  Of  this  correspondence  the  admiring  Pictet 
writes:  "The  Historical  Society  of  Massachusetts,  in 
choosing  the  Count  to  membership,  expressed  to  him, 
through  its  President,  their  unanimous  desire  to  see 
him  return  to  his  own  country  and  settle  among  them. 
His  answer,  which  may  be  read  in  the  American  papers 
of  the  time,  was  much  admired.  I  regret  that  I  cannot 
transcribe  it." 

I  am  glad  that  I  can  transcribe  the  letter  from  the 
files  of  the  Society  as  follows :  — 

"  REVEREND  SIR,  —  I  have  had  the  pleasure  to  receive  your 
letter  of  the  3ist  January,  in  which  you  inform  me  of  my  hav- 
ing been  elected  a  Member  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society.  I  request,  Sir,  that  you  would  present  my  best  thanks 
to  that  respectable  body  for  the  honor  they  have  done  me,  and 
at  the  same  time  assure  them  that  I  feel  myself  highly  flattered 
by  this  distinguished  mark  of  their  regard  and  esteem. 

"  Though  my  present  situation  and  connections  must  for  the 
present,  and  may  perhaps  for  ever,  prevent  my  having  the  satis- 
faction of  co-operating  with  the  Society  in  the  furtherance  of 
their  interesting  and  useful  researches,  yet  I  shall  have  much 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  347 

pleasure  in  contemplating,  even  at  this  great  distance,  the  fruits 
of  their  meritorious  exertions  ;  and  shall  feel  no  small  degree  of 
pride  in  seeing  myself  enrolled  in  the  same  list  with  those  gen- 
erous benefactors  of  future  generations  whose  names  will  go  down 
to  posterity  with  the  treasures  they  are  collecting. 

"  There  are  few  things  that  could  afford  me  so  much  heart- 
felt satisfaction  as  to  be  able  to  avail  myself  of  the  kind  invita- 
tion of  the  Society  to  come  and  take  my  place  among  them.  I 
have  ever  -loved  my  native  country  with  the  fondest  affection ; 
and  the  liberality  I  have  experienced  from  my  Countrymen  — 
their  moderation  in  success,  and  their  consummate  prudence  in 
the  use  of  their  Independence,  have  attached  me  to  them  by  all 
the  ties  of  Gratitude,  Esteem,  and  Admiration. 

"  Requesting  that  you,  Sir,  would  accept  my  thanks  for  the 
flattering  manner  in  which  you  have  conveyed  to  me  the  Reso- 
lution of  the  Society,  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  with  sincere 
Regard  and  Esteem, 

"  Your  much  obliged  and  most  obedient  Servant, 

«  RUMFORD. 

"MUNICH,  22  April,  1798. 

"  The  REV.  JEREMY  BELKNAP,  D.D.,  Secretary  to 
the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society." 

Another  yet  more  gratifying  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  whatever  of  reproach  had  rested  on  his  name  in 
his  native  country  was  now  removed,  was  received  by 
Count  Rumford  at  this  time.  The  representation 
generally  made  in  the  various  biographical  sketches  of 
him  —  following  the  statement  first  put  in  print  by 
Pictet  —  is  that  he  was  solicited  by  the  government 
of  the  United  States  to  return  here,  and  that  the  re- 
quest was  accompanied  by  the  offer  of  a  place  in  its  pay 
and  service.  Thus  Pictet,  whom  we  must  regard  as 
relating  the  communication  made  to  him  by  his  friend, 
says  :  — 


348  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

cc  Meanwhile  the  report  was  circulated  in  America 
that  he  had  finally  left  Bavaria,  and  the  government 
of  the  United  States,  through  the  American  Envoy  at 
London,  addressed  to  him  a  formal  and  official  invita- 
tion to  return  to  his  native  country,  where  an  honora- 
ble establishment  would  be  provided  for  him.  The 
offer  was  accompanied  by  the  most  flattering  assurances 
of  consideration  and  confidence." 

It  is  only  after  considerable  inquiry  and  search  given 
to  the  investigation  of  the  facts  connected  with  this 
interesting  subject  that  I  have  succeeded  in  reaching 
an  authentic  and  clear  account  of  them  from  original, 
unprinted  documents.  I  had  thought  it  quite  unlikely 
tha.t  the  initiative  step  was  taken  by  the  government 
of  the  United  States  in  inviting  the  return  of  Count 
Rumford  to  America,  and  in  connecting  with  the 
invitation  the  proffer  of  a  place  in  the  public  service. 
True,  the  great  and  well-deserved  fame  which  the 
Count  had  attained  in  Europe,  and  which  was  not 
diminished,  however  it  may  have  been  qualified,  as  it 
reached  America,  might  have  seemed  to  justify  the 
general  government  in  overriding  State  enactments  by 
inviting  home  a  proscribed  citizen.  But  it  was  none 
the  less  a  fact  that  Count  Rumford  was  under  a  legal 
disability.  He  had  been  proscribed  as  having  been 
hostile  to  the  American  cause  when  he  left  the  country, 
and  he  had  added  to  his  original  offence  the  graver 
one  of  having  guided  the  counsels  and  commanded 
the  forces  of  the  enemy.  The  treaty  of  peace  between 
Great  Britain  and  America  pledged  the  general  gov- 
ernment to  appeal  to  the  State  governments  for  a 
degree  of  leniency  toward  the  outlawed  Tories ;  but 
this  condition  fell  short  of  restoring  citizenship,  or  a 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  349 

right  to  return  here  to  the  proscribed.  We  have  seen, 
too,  that  the  Count,  in  a  letter  to  Colonel  Baldwin,  had 
not  forgotten  the  disability  under  which  he  lay.  The 
natural  inference,  therefore,  was  that  whatever  action 
was  had  by  the  government  of  the  United  States  in 
the  case  of  the  Count  was  prompted  by  some  expression 
or  proposition  of  his  own. 

The  Hon.  Charles  Sumner,  Senator  of  Massachu- 
setts, and  Chairman  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  For- 
eign Affairs,  was  kind  enough,  at  my  request,  to  insti- 
tute a  search  in  the  records  of  the  State  Department  at 
Washington,  for  the  purpose  of  finding,  if  there  were 
such,  any  official  documents  of  the  tenor  above  de- 
scribed. He  informs  me  that  no  such  documents  ap- 
pear. But  inquiry  in*  another  direction,  suggested  by 
the  statement  of  Pictet,  that  the  alleged  invitation  was 
made  to  Rumford  through  the  American  Envoy  at 
London,  has  enabled  me  to  give  a  full  account  of  the 
matter. 

Count  Rumford,  as  I  have  said,  became,  after  the 
close  of  the  war  of  the  Revolution,  a  most  warm  and  faith- 
ful friend  of  his  native  country,  holding  correspondence 
with  many  of  its  citizens,  to  whom  he  communicated 
his  plans,  and  sent  his  works,  and  generously  dividing 
among  its  literary  and  scientific  institutions  his  benev- 
olent endowments.  He  also,  when  in  England,  and 
afterwards  when  in  France,  maintained  the  closest 
social  relations  with  Americans  resident  in  those  coun- 
tries either  as  officials  of  our  government  or  in  pri- 
vate life.  Among  his  most  intimate  friends  in  Lon- 
don at  this  time  were  the  Hon.  Rufus  King  and  the 
Hon.  Christopher  Gore.  The  former  was  the  Ameri- 
can Ambassador.  Mr.  Gore,  afterwards  Governor  of 


35O  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Massachusetts,  had  been  commissioned  in  1796,  with 
Pinckney  and  Trumbull  to  represent  American  claims 
for  British  spoliations  on  our  commerce.  For  this 
purpose  he  was  abroad  eight  years,  being  the  confiden- 
tial friend  of  Mr.  King,  who  left  him  as  American 
Charge  d*  Affaires  in  London,  on  his  return  home 
in  1803.  The  Count's  intercourse  with  these  two 
gentlemen  led  to  the  results  which  are  stated  with 
substantial  correctness  by  Pictet.  No  publication  has 
yet  been  made  of  the  official  papers  of  the  Hon. 
Rufus  King,  though  his  son,  the  late  much-honored 
President  of  Columbia  College,  New  York,  was 
pledged  to  the  undertaking.  To  my  application  to 
a  grandson  of  the  ambassador,  Mr.  Charles  R.  King, 
of  Andalusia,  Buck's  County,  Pennsylvania,  I  re- 
ceived a  most  satisfactory  reply,  the  tenor  of  which 
is  indicated  by  the  following  extract  from  his  letter 
to  me:  — 

"  The  search  among  my  grandfather's  papers  for  correspond- 
ence with  Count  Rumford  has  proved  more  successful  than 
at  one  time  I  supposed  would  be  the  case.  Enclosed  with  this 
you  will  find  copies  of  letters  referring  to  the  interesting  facts 
respecting  which  you  desired  information,  and  which  I  think 
have  never  been  published. 

"The  letter  of  Rufus  King  to  Colonel  Pickering,  of  the  8th 
December,  1798,  shows  clearly  the  reasons  which  moved  Count 
Rumford  to  desire  to  leave  England  and  to  return  to  this  coun- 
try ;  and  the  suggestion  that  he  should  be  cordially  welcomed 
here  drew  from  James  McHenry,  the  Secretary  at  War,  an 
answer  of  the  3d  July,  1799  (which  I  am  sorry  to  say,  I  cannot 
find),  containing,  as  permitted  by  President  Adams,  the  offer  to 
the  Count  of  the  Superintendence  of  the  Military  Academy  and 
of  Inspector-General  of  Artillery.  The  letters  of  King  and 
Rumford  show  clearly  the  deep  regard  and  friendship  they  had 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  351 

for  each  other,  and  the  earnest  desire  of  both  to  advance  the 
welfare  of  their  native  country,  &c.,  &c." 

The  following  correspondence,  copied  from  the  origi- 
nals, is  of  great  interest :  — 

[Copy.-] 

"LONDON,  December  8,  1798. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  Count  Rumford,  late  Sir  Benjamin  Thomp- 
son, whose  name  and  history  are  probably  known  to  you,  and 
whose  talents  and  services  have  procured  the  most  beneficial 
Establishments  and  reforms  in  Bavaria,  was  lately  named  by 
the  Elector  to  be  his  Minister  at  this  Court.  On  his  arrival 
he  has  been  informed,  that,  being  a  British  Subject,  it  was  con- 
trary to  usage  to  receive  him,  and  that  therefore  he  could 
not  be  acknowledged.  The  intrigues  and  opposition  against 
which  he  had  for  some  years  made  head  in  Bavaria  proba- 
bly made  him  desire  the  mission  to  England.  The  refusal 
that  he  has  here  met  with  has  decided  him  to  return  and  settle 
himself  in  America.  He  proposes  to  establish  himself  at  or 
near  Cambridge,  to  live  there  in  the  character  of  a  German 
Count,  to  renounce  all  political  Expectations,  and  devote  him- 
self to  literary  pursuits,  His  connections  in  this  country  are 
strictly  literary,  and  his  knowledge,  particularly  in  the  Mili- 
tary Department,  may  be  of  great  use  to  us.  The  Count  is 
well  acquainted  with  and  has  had  much  experience  in  the 
establishment  of  Cannon  Foundries;  that  which  he  established 
in  Bavaria  is  spoken  of  in  very  high  terms,  as  well  as  certain 
improvements  that  he  has  introduced  in  the  mounting  of  flying 
Artillery. 

He  possesses  an  extensive  Military  Library,  and  assures  me 
that  he  wishes  nothing  more  than  to  be  useful  to  our  Country. 
I  make  this  Communication  by  his  desire,  and  my  wish  is  that 
he  may  be  well  received,  as  I  s*n  persuaded  that  his  Principles 
are  good,  and  his  talents  and  information  uncommonly  extensive. 
It  is  possible  that  attempts  may  be  made  to  misrepresent  his 
political  opinions  ;  from  the  enquiry  that  I  have  made  on 


352  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

this    head,   I  am    convinced    that   his    political    sentiments    are 
correct. 

"Be  good  enough  to  communicate  this  letter  to  the  Presi- 
dent. 

"  With  great  respect  and  esteem,  I  have  the  honor  to  be, 
dear  sir, 

"  Yours  faithfully, 

"RUFUS   KING. 
"  COLONEL  PICKERING."     [Secretary  of  State.] 

"LONDON,  March  10,  1799. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  annex  a  copy  of  a  letter  from  Count  Rum- 
ford,  formerly  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson,  to  me  upon  a  subject 
somewhat  interesting.  I  am  persuaded  that  the  establishment 
of  an  American  Military  Academy  is  an  object  of  the  first  im- 
portance to  us.  Count  Rumford  has  founded  one  in  Bavaria 
that  enjoys  a  very  high  reputation,  and  I  have  reason  to  believe 
that  he  would  receive  very  great  pleasure  in  communicating  to 
us  the  results  of  his  Experience  on  this  subject.  I  have  not 
seen  his  Military  Books,  Drawings,  &c.,  but  am  informed  that 
that  they  are  inestimable.  The  cannon  he  proposes  to  make  a 
present  of  to  the  United  States  is  a  perfect  Model,  and  will 
serve  to  assist  us  in  the  casting  and  mounting  of  our  Field 
Artillery.  I  have  sent  a  copy  of  the  Count's  letter  likewise 
to  Col.  Pickering,  and  must  wait  for  the  President's  instruc- 
tions through  him  or  you  in  what  manner  I  shall  answer  it. 
Count  Rumford  proposes  to  return  with  the  view  of  residing 
part  of  his  time  in  his  native  Country.  On  this  subject  I  take 
the  Liberty  to  refer  you  to  a  letter  from  me  to  Col.  Picker- 
ing, and  will  only  add,  that  it  would  undoubtedly  be  encour- 
aging and  grateful  to  him  to  receive  an  assurance  from  the 
President  through  me,  or  in  any  other  way,  that  he  will  be 

received  in  a  kind  and  friendly  manner 

"  With  sincere  ^teem  and  respect, 

"RUFUS    KING. 

"  JAMES  McHzNRY,  ESQ/' 


Life  of  Count  Rumford*  353 


"DEAR  SIR,  —  I  send  you  herewith  a  small  Pamphlet  which 
will  explain  to  you  the  Causes  which  have  rendered  it  impossible 
for  me  to  go  to  America  this  Spring  as  I  had  intended.  I  have 
not,  however,  given  over  all  ideas  of  visiting  that  Country  at 
some  future  period  ;  very  far  from  it,  I  really  hope  and  expect 
to  be  able  to  go  there  next  Spring,  and  will  most  certainly  do 
so,  if  it  should  be  possible,  provided  you  should  continue  to  ad- 
vise it,  and  to  encourage  me  with  the  hopes  of  a  kind  reception. 

"  I  beg  you  would  do  me  the  honor  to  present  one  of  the 
enclosed  Pamphlets  to  his  Excellency  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  and  accompany  it  with  my  best  Respects  and 
most  cordial  wishes  for  his  health  and  happiness  and  for  the 
prosperity  of  the  United  States. 

u  The  .Model  of  a  Field-Piece  on  a  new,  and  I  believe  on 
an  improved  construction,  which  I  have  destined  as  a  Present  to 
the  United  States,  I  shall  pack  up  and  send  to  you  in  order  to  its 
being  shipped  for  America  as  soon  as  I  shall  get  it  from  His  Royal 
Highness  the  Duke  of  York,  who  has  desired  to  have  a  copy  of  it. 

"  You  will  recollect  that  in  a  conversation  we  had  at  your 
house  on  the  great  importance  to  the  United  States  of  the 
speedy  Establishment  of  a  Military  School  or  academy,  I  took 
the  liberty  to  say  that  to  assist  in  the  establishment  of  so  useful 
an  Institution  I  should  be  happy  to  be  permitted  to  make 
a  present  to  the  Academy,  of  my  collection  of  Military  Books, 
Plans,  Drawings,  and  Models.  I  now  repeat  this  offer,  and 
with  a  request  to  you  that  you  would  make  it  known  to  the 
Executive  Government  of  the  United  States,  and  that  you 
would  let  me  know  as  soon  as  may  be  convenient  whether  this 
offer  will  be  accepted. 

"  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  with  the  most  sincere  regard  and 
esteem,  Dear  Sir, 

"  Your  most  obedient  and  most  faithful  servant, 

"RUMFORD. 

"BROMPTON  Row,  13  March,  1799. 

"  His  Excellency  RUFUS  KING,  Envoy  Extraordinary 
and  Minister  Plenipotentiary  of  the  United  States,  &c." 
23 


354  Life  of  Count  Rimiford. 


"LONDON,  Sept.  8,  1799. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  have  more  than  once  expressed  to  you  a 
wish  that  you  might  find  leisure,  as  well  as  inclination,  to  revisit 
your  native  Country,  where,  I  have  been  persuaded,  you  would 
meet  with  a  friendly  and  cordial  reception,  and  by  your  presence 
and  advice  might  be  of  great  advantage  to  our  public  institu- 
tions, the  establishment  of  which,  upon  approved  principles,  is 
an  object  of  the  highest  consequence.  I  am  happy  that  I  have 
it  in  my  power  to  assure  you  that  I  have  not  been  mistaken  in 
these  sentiments,  and  it  affords  me  peculiar  satisfaction  to 
execute  the  order  that  I  have  lately  received  from  my  Gov- 
ernment to  invite  you  in  its  name  to  return  and  reside  among 
us,  and  to  propose  to  you  to  enter  into  the  American  Service. 

"In  the  course  of  the  last  year  we  have  made  provision  for  the 
institution  of  a  Military  Academy,  and  we  wish  to  commit  its  for- 
mation to  your  experience,  and  its  future  government  to  your  care. 
It  is  not  necessary  on  this  occasion  to  send  you  a  detailed  account 
of  our  Military  establishment,  which  indeed  would  be  best  ex- 
plained by  a  reference  to  the  Laws  upon  which  it  depends;  these 
are  in  my  possession,  and  shall  be  put  into  your  hands  if  you  desire 
it.  In  addition  to  the  Superintendence  of  the  Military  Academy, 
I  am  authorized  to  offer  to  you  the  appointment  of  Inspector-Gen- 
eral of  the  Artillery  of  the  United  States,  and  we  shall,  moreover, 
be  disposed  to  give  to  you  such  rank  and  emoluments,  consistent 
with  existing  provisions,  and  with  what  has  already  been  settled 
upon  the  former  of  these  heads,  as  would  be  likely  to  afford  you 
satisfaction,  and  to  secure  to  us  the  advantages  of  your  service. 

"  If  your  engagements  will  allow  of  your  entering  into  our 
service,  which  I  sincerely  hope  may  be  the  case,  I  will  ask  the 
favor  of  you  to  take  an  early  opportunity  of  signifying  the  same 
to  me,  in  order  that  we  may  proceed  to  fufther  and  more  par- 
ticular explanations  upon  the  subject. 

"With  the  greatest  consideration  and  esteem,  I  have  the 
honor  to  be,  Dear  Sir, 

"  Your  obedient  and  faithful  servant, 

[Signed]  "RUFUS    KING. 

"  COUNT  RUMFORD,  &c.,  &c.,  &c." 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  355 

[Count  Rumford's  reply.] 

"  BROMPTON,  12  Sept.  1799. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  am  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your 
Excellency's  most  flattering  letter  of  the  8th  inst.,  the  perusal 
of  which  has  filled  my  mind  with  sentiments  much  more  easy  to 
be  conceived  than  expressed. 

"  I  am  deeply  sensible  of  the  honor  that  has  been  conferred 
upon  me  by  the  Government  of  the  United  States,  by  the  kind 
invitation  they  have  sent  me  to  come  and  reside  in  my  native 
Country,  and  also  by  the  other  distinguished  and  most  flattering 
proofs  of  their  confidence  and  esteem  with  which  that  invitation 
has  been  accompanied. 

"  Nothing  could  have  afforded  me  so  much  satisfaction  as 
to  have  had  it  in  my  power  to  have  given  to  my  liberal  and 
generous  countrymen  such  proof  of  my  sentiments  as  would 
in  the  most  public  and  ostensible  manner  have  evinced,  not 
only  my  gratitude  for  the  kind  attentions  I  have  received  from 
them,  but  also  the  ardent  desire  I  feel  to  assist  in  promoting 
the  prosperity  of  my  native  Country.  But  engagements  which 
great  obligations  have  rendered  sacred  and  inviolable  put  it 
out  of  my  power  to  dispose  of  my  time  and  services  with 
that  unreserved  freedom  which  would  be  necessary  in  order 
to  enable  me  to  accept  of  those  generous  offers  which  the 
Executive  Government  of  the  United  States  has  been  pleased 
to  propose  to  me.  But  although  it  is  not  in  my  power  to 
dissolve  those  ties  by  which  I  am  bound,  yet  I  have  no 
doubt  of  being  able  to  obtain  permission  to  visit  America, 
and  should  that  permission  (which  I  shall  certainly  solicit) 
be  granted,  I  shall  take  an  early  opportunity  of  crossing 
the  Atlantic  in  order  to  pay  my  personal  respects  to  the 
President  of  the  United  States,  and  to  return  him  my  thanks 
for  the  distinguished  honor  he  has  been  pleased  to  confer 
on  me. 

"  I  cannot  finish  this  letter  without  requesting  that  you,  Sir, 
would  accept  my  best  acknowledgments  for  the  many  civilities 
i  have  received  from  you,  and  more  especially  for  the  very 
polite  manner  in  which  you  have  been  so  good  as  to  communi- 


356  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

cate  to  me  the  favorable  sentiments  of  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  with  respect  to  me. 

u  With  the   most  sincere   wishes   for  the  Prpsperity  of  the 
United  States,  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  Sir, 

"  Your  Excellency's  most  obedient  Humble  Servant, 

"RUMFORD. 

"  His  Excellency  RUFUS  KING,  Envoy  Extraordinary  and 

Minister  Plenipotentiary  of  the.  United  States 

at  the  Court  of  London." 


"LONDON,  Sep.  7,  1799. 

"DEAR  SIR,  —  I  have  duly  received  your  Letter  of  the  3d 
of  July,  respecting  Count  Rumford.  We  have  had  some 
conversation  upon  the  subject,  which  will  be  resumed.  I,  how- 
ever, conclude  from  what  has  already  passed,  that,  though  much 
gratified  with  the  offer,  he  will  wisely  decline  accepting  it.  I 
shall  hereafter  send  you  a  more  exact  report  upon  this  subject. 

"  The  Count's  Letter  to  you  accompanying  the  Models  of 
the  Field-Piece  and  ammunition-waggon  was  written  and  sent 
to  me  before  he  had  any  knowledge  of  the  subject  of  your  letter 
of  the  3d  of  July.  I  hope  we  shall  not  be  disappointed  in  send- 
ing you  the  Boxes  which  contain  these  Models  by  the  General 
Washington,  a  stout  ship  now  ready  to  sail  for  Philadelphia. 

"  With  sincere  respect  and  Esteem,  I  have  the  honor  to  be, 
Dear  Sir, 

"  Your  most  obedient  servant, 

[Signed]  "RUFUS    KING. 

"  JAMES  McHENRY,  Esq." 


"  DEAR  SIR,  —  At  length  they  have  returned  the  Model  of  my 
Field-Piece,  though  not  till  after  I  had  repeatedly  made  applica- 
tion for  it.  I  have  repacked  it  and  its  Ammunition-  Waggon  in 
their  deal  boxes,  and  if  you  will  give  me  leave  I  will  send  these 
two  boxes  to  your  house,  in  order  to  their  being  sent  by  you  to 
America. 

"  Enclosed  is  the  draft  of  a  letter  which  I  send  to  you  for 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  357 

your  opinion  of  it,  requesting  that  you  would  make  such  altera- 
tions in  it  as  you  may  judge  to  be  proper. 

u  If  you  think  my  letter  ought  to  be  addressed  to  any  other 
Person  than  the  Person  proposed,  you  will  tell  me  so.  You 
will  likewise  be  so  kind  as  to  point  out  the  Person  or  Persons 
to  whom  the  models  ought  to  be  presented. 

"  I  was  yesterday  at  Gravesend,  and  saw  my  Daughter  into 
the  Boat  that  carried  her  on  board  the  Minerva.  She  has  left 
England  deeply  impressed  with  a  sense  of  the  kindness  she 
experienced  from  you  and  from  your  Lady.  Her  father  joins 
her  in  thanks  for  these  kind  attentions,  and  will  ever  remain, 
my  dear  Sir, 

"  Your  much  obliged  and  most  obedient  servant, 

"  RUMFORD. 

"  BROMPTON,  Monday  morning,  26th  August,  1799." 

"  His  Excellency  RUFUS  KING,  &c.,  &c." 


'*  BRIGHTON,  August  28,  1799. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  have  duly  received  your  obliging  letter  of 
the  26th,  and  herewith  return  the  Draft  of  a  letter  that  you 
propose  should  accompany  the  models  of  the  field-piece,  &c.  I 
see  nothing  to  add  or  alter  excepting  in  the  address,  which 
should  be  to  the  Secretary  at  War,  instead  of  the  Sec'y  of 
State.  I  have  taken  the  liberty,  as  you  will  observe,  to  make 
this  alteration  with  a  pencil. 

"  The  models  should  also  be  addressed  to  the  Secretary  at 
War.  As  we  are  now  shipping  a  number  of  articles  to  Phila- 
delphia, I  have  desired  my  Secretary  to  take  measures  to  remove 
the  boxes  directly  from  your  house  to  our  Agent's  in  the  City,  as 
soon  as  he  learns  by  a  note  from  you  that  they  are  ready. 

"  I  have  lately  received  a  Dispatch  from  my  Government, 
the  contents  of  which  will  not  fail  to  increase  those  favorable 
sentiments  you  so  naturally  feel  concerning  your  Native  Coun- 
try, and  I  permit  myself  to  hope  will  prove  an  additional  motive 
to  the  execution  of  your  intentions  soon  to  revisit  it. 

"  As  I  shall  be  in  town  in  the  course  of  the  next  week,  where 


358  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

I  expect  the  pleasure  of  meeting  you,  we  will  then  enter  more 
particularly  upon  this  agreeable  subject.  In  the  mean  time  I 
have  the  honor  to  be,  &c.,  &c. 

"RUFUS    KING. 
"  COUNT  RUMFORD,  &c.,  &c." 

On  the  9th  of  March,  1800,  Count  Rumford  having 
asked  of  Mr.  King  cc  a  list  of  all  the  Universities, 
Academies,  Colleges,  and  other  scientific  bodies  of  note 
and  respectability  in  the  United  States,  together  with 
the  names  of  their  Presidents,"  desiring  to  send  them 
"  our  Prospectus,"  that  is,  of  the  Royal  Institution 
of  Great  Britain  (and  having  received  from  Mr.  King 
a  list  of  eleven),  wrote  to  Mr.  King  as  follows:  — 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  In  consequence  of  the  permission  you  gave 
me,  I  send  you  herewith  Eleven  packages,  containing  each  a 
Copy  of  the  Prospectus,  Charter,  Ordinances,  Bye-Laws  and 
Regulations,  of  the  Royal  Institution  of  Great  Britain,  accom- 
panied by  a  letter  written  by  myself,  at  the  desire  and  in  the 
names  of  the  Managers  of  the  Institution,  expressing  to  the 
different  learned  Societies  in  the  United  States  the  wish  of  the 
Managers  to  communicate  with  them  in  all  things  that  may  tend 
to  the  advancement  of  useful  Knowledge. 

"  It  will  give  me  great  satisfaction  to  hear  of  the  safe  arrival 
of  these  packages  at  the  places  of  their  destination,  but  still 
greater  to  hear  that  the  new  establishment  for  diffusing  the 
knowledge  and  facilitating  the  general  introduction  of  new  and 
useful  improvements  which  I  have  been  instrumental  in  found- 
ing in  this  Metropolis  should  be  thought  worthy  of  imitation  in 
my  native  Country. 

"With  my  best  wishes  for  the  Prosperity  of  that  Country,  and 
with  much  esteem  and  regard  for  its  worthy  Representative  in  this, 
"  I  am,  my  dear  Sir,  yours  most  faithfully, 

"RUMFORD. 

"  ROYAL  INSTITUTION,  ist  June,  1800. 

"  RUFUS  KING,  Esc^,  &c.,  &c.,  &c." 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  359 

It  thus  appears  that  the  proposition  for  his  return  to 
America  originated  with  Count  Rumford  himself  and 
was  warmly  seconded  by  his  friends.  No  doubt  he 
would  have  accepted  the  honorable  trusts  thus  proffered 
to  him  had  he  not  found  himself  most  laboriously  and 
hopefully  employed  in  the  founding  of  that  now  venera- 
ble and  honored  Institution  in  London  whose  origin  we 
are  soon  to  trace. 

In  addition  to  the  letters  given  above  I  copy  another, 
which  is  the  only  one  known  to  me  referring  to  this 
matter,  already  in  print.  It  was  the  reply  of  President 
John  Adams  to  Secretary  McHenry. 

"  QUINCY,  24th  June,  1799. 

"  SIR, —  I  have  received  your  letter  of  the  i8th,  and  have 
read  Count  Rumford's  letter  to  Mr.  King. 

"  For  five  or  six  years  past  I  have  been  attentive  to  the  char- 
acter of  this  gentleman,  and  have  read  some  of  his  Essays. 
From  these  I  have  formed  an  esteem  for  his  genius,  talents, 
enterprise,  and  benevolence,  which  will  secure  him  from  me, 
in  case  of  his  return  to  his  native  country,  a  reception  as  kind 
and  civil  as  it  may  be  in  my  power  to  give  htm.  But  you  know 
the  difficulties  those  gentlemen  have  who  left  the  country  as  he 
did,  either  to  give  or  receive  entire  satisfaction.  I  should  not 
scruple,  however,  to  give  him  any  of  the  appointments  you 
mention,  and  leave  it  with  you  to  make  such  proposals  to  him 
through  Mr.  King,  within  the  limits  you  have  drawn  in  your 
letter,  as  you  should  think  fit.  I  return  Mr.  King's  letter,  and 
enclose  one  from  Mr.  William  Williams,  a  very  respectable 
personage,  recommending  Rufus  Tyler  to  be  an  officer  in  the 
army."  • 

The  Count,  not  having  asked  for  an  office,  had  one 
in  this  circuitous  way  proffered  to  him,  which,  of 
course,  he  was  under  no  obligation  to  accept.  Pictet 

*  Works  of  President  John  Adams,  Vol.  VIII.  pp.  660,  661. 


360  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

follows  the  assertion  quoted  above,  as  to  the  solicitation 
made  to  the  Count  to  return  to  America  and  accept  an 
"  establishment  "  by  adding  this  :  — 

"  The  Count  replied,  testifying  his  profound  appre- 
ciation of  this  mark  of  regard,  that  engagements  ren- 
dered sacred  and  inviolable  by  great  obligations  would 
not  allow  him  to  dispose  of  himself  in  a  way  to  enable 
him  to  accept  the  offer  which  had  been  made  to  him. 
Certainly  there  is  no  trace  of  animosity  in  these  com- 


munications." 


In  his  Essay  on  Gunpowder,*  the  Count  says  that  he 
had  sent  to  the  United  States  government,  as  a  present, 
a  model  field-piece  of  his  own  construction.  I  have 
sought  information  from  the  War  Department  at  Wash- 
ington as  to  any  record  concerning  the  receipt  or 
acknowledgment  of  this  gift,  or  of  the  military  library, 
drawings,  &c.  which  he  proposed  to  send  hither.  The 
Inspector-General,  in  behalf  of  the  Secretary  of  War, 
writes  me  in  reply,  that  a  search  has  shown  $c  that  the 
records  of  the  Department  afford  no  intelligence  con- 
cerning Count  Rumford.  If  any  papers  relating  to  the 
subject  were  ever  filed  in  the  War  Department,  they 
were  no  doubt  involved  in  the  destruction  of  the  War 
Office  by  fire,  in  the  year  1800." 

The  well-authenticated  facts  which  have  thus  been 
laid  before  the  reader  concerning  an  incident  in  Count 
Rumford's  personal  history  which  had  heretofore  been 
so  positively  stated,  but  yet  so  vaguely  related,  and 
without  proper  vouchers,  are  equally  honorable  to  him- 
self and  to  those  who  held  high  trusts  under  the  Ameri- 
can government. 

The    noble    undertaking    to  which    Count   Rumford 

*  Academy's  Edition,  Vol.  I.  p.  177. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  361 

committed  himself  with  such  devotion  and  ztal,  to  be 
fully  described  in  the  next  chapter,  is  assigned  in  the 
following  letter  as  the  cause  of  his  postponing  his  visit 
to  America. 

"LONDON,  I4th  March,  1799 

"  MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  I  will  not  attempt  to  describe  the 
painful  disappointment  I  feel  at  being  obliged  to  give  up  all 
hopes  of  seeing  you,  and  the  rest  of  my  dear  friends  in  America, 
this  year.  A  small  pamphlet  which  you  will  receive  with  this 
letter  [containing  the  proposals  for  the  -Royal  Institution] 
will  acquaint  you  with  the  reasons  that  have  induced  me  to 
postpone  my  intended  voyage  ;  and  you  will,  I  am  confident, 
agree  with  me  in  opinion,  that  I  have  done  right  in  sacri- 
ficing the  pleasure  that  voyage  would  have  afforded  me  to 
the  most  important  objects  to  which  my  attention  has  been 
called. 

"  I  beg  you  would  be  so  kind  as  to  give  my  dear  Mother  the 
earliest  notice  of  this  change  in  my  plans,  and  that  you  would 
at  the  same  time  endeavour  to  give  her  just  ideas  of  the  very 
great  importance  of  the  undertaking  in  which  I  have  been  called 
upon  to  give  my  assistance  ;  and  show  her  how  impossible  it 
was  for  me  to  refuse  that  assistance,  especially  as  it  was  asked 
in  a  manner  so  honourable  to  myself.  And  as  the  success  of 
the  undertaking  will  be  productive  of  so  much  good,  and  will 
place  me  in  so  distinguished  a  situation  in  the  eyes  of  the  world, 
and  of  Posterity,  you  will,  I  am  persuaded,  find  little  difficulty 
in  persuading  her  that  I  have  done  perfectly  right,  and  in 
reconciling  her  to  the  disappointment  she  will  naturally  feel  at 
not  seeing  me  arrive  in  America  at  the  time  appointed. 

"  You  must  give  me  leave  to  complain  of  you,  my  good 
friend,  for  your  silence.  Several  vessels  have  lately  arrived 
from  Boston  and  have  brought  letters  both  for  myself  and  for 
Sally.  But  there  were  none  among  them  from  you.  Why 
should  you  not  embrace  the  opportunity  when  you  will  be  sure 
to  find  me  and  my  Daughter  in  London,  to  take  a  trip  across 
the  Atlantic  to  see  Great  Britain  ?  You  shall  find  a  home  and 


362  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

a  hearty  welcome  in  my  house  as  long  as  it  may  be  convenient 
to  you  to  stay  with  us. 

"  By   the    by,    I    much   wish    you    could    contrive    to   bring 

P ,  &c.,  &c. 

"  I  am,  ever,  Yours  most  Sincerely, 

"RUMFORD. 
"  The  Honb.le  COLONEL  BALDWIN,  Woburn,  &c." 

("Recd  Aug.  27,  1799.") 

The  following  letter  from  the  mother  of  Count  Rum- 
ford  to  Colonel  Baldwin,  like  those  of  her  son  relating 
to  herself  and  her  husband,  his  step-father,  gives  full 
evidence  of  the  affectionate  regards  of  the  parties 
concerned. 

"  FLINTSTOWN,  July  1 8,  1799. 

"DEAR  SIR, —  I  have  waited  a  long  time  in  anxious  ex- 
pectation of  seeing  my  son,  but  I  fear  that  I  shall  be  disap- 
pointed. I  have  not  called  for  my  bill  of  exchange,  for  I 
thought  if  my  son  was  coming  to  America  as  early  in  the  year 
as  he  was  expected,  I  would  wait  until  his  arrival.  I  am  now 
in  want  of  some  money.  When  I  was  at  Boston  last,  Mr. 
Samuel  Clapp  told  me  that  if  I  would  get  my  bills  drawn  in  his 
name,  or  in  his  favor,  —  I  have  forgot  which,  but  it  was  to  be  in 
such  a  way  as  that  it  would  be  proper  for  him  to  indorse  them, 
—  that  he  would  take  them  and  indorse  them,  and  sell  them, 
and  forward  the  money  for  me  to  Portland.  If  you  would  be  so 
kind  as  to  draw  my  bills  in  such  a  way  as  that  it  will  be  proper 
for  Mr.  Clapp  to  indorse  them,  and  put  them  into  his  hands,  it 
will  do  me  a  great  favor. 

"  I  have  had  thoughts  of  coming  to  Boston  this  season,  but 
my  health  is  so  poor  that  I  do  not  feel  able  to  perform  the 
journey.  My  husband  is  very  weak  and  infirm.  If  you  should 
get  any  intelligence  of  my  son,  I  desire  that  you  would  inform 
me  of  it  as  soon  as  possible,  for  I  feel  a  great  anxiety  to  hear 
from  him.  I  fear  that  something  extraordinary  is  the  matter, 
that  I  do  not  hear  from  him.  Please  to  give  my  love  and 


Life  of  Count  Rumford*  363 

regards  to  your  family  and  inquiring  friends.  Your  compliance 
with  my  request  in  this  letter  will  be  a  great  favor  that  will  be 
acknowledged  with  gratitude  by 

u  Your  obliged  friend, 

"RUTH  PIERCE. 
"  HON.  LOAMMI  BALDWIN,  ESQ^,  Woburn.*" 


Pictet  says  in  reference  to  the  daughter's  return  to 
America  at  this  time  :  (C  The  contrast  between  the 
pleasant  and  quiet  ways  of  her  own  country  and  the 
hubbub  of  the  court  of  Bavaria,  where  her  father  re- 
sided, was  too  severe  for  her  to  reconcile  and  con- 
form herself  to  it.  Her  health  suffered  ;  she  could 
breathe  only  the  air  of  America,  and  she  returned  thither. 
She  kept  up  with  her  father  a  constant  and  most  inter- 
esting correspondence,  to  judge  of  it  by  the  fragments 
which  he  has  allowed  me  to  read." 

Sarah  took  with  her  the  following  pleasant  letter  to 
Colonel  Baldwin:  — 

"BROMPTON,  near  London,  24th  Aug.,  1799. 

"  MY  DEAR  FRIEND,  —  I  cannot  permit  my  Daughter  to 
return  to  America  without  charging  her  with  a  few  lines  for 
my  oldest  friend  and  school-fellow,  the  companion  of  my  earliest 
youth.  In  straining  my  recollection  as  much  as  possible,  in 
order  to  look  back  into  that  dark  cloud  that  covers  the  early 
period  of  life,  I  can  remember  no  person  distinctly  longer  than 
yourself,  except  it  be  my  mother.  I  must  therefore  consider 
you  as  one  of  my  oldest  acquaintances,  and  I  have  never  ceased 
to  regard  you  and  to  love  you  as  one  of  my  best  friends.  A 
few  months  ago  I  flattered  myself  with  the  hope  of  soon  seeing 
you,  but  events  happened  to  frustrate  those  hopes.  But  though 
my  voyage  to  America  is  postponed,  it  is  by  no  means  abandoned. 
On  the  contrary,  I  really  think  it  very  likely  that  I  shall  pay 
you  a  visit  next  Spring. 

"  My  Daughter  will  explain  to  you  all  the  various  reasons 


364  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

that  conspired  to  prevent  my  accompanying  her  to  America 
this  year.  She  will  likewise  tell  you  how  happy  you  will  make 
me  if  you  would  embrace  the  opportunity  now,  while  I  am  on 
the  spot,  of  visiting  England.  I  can  offer  you  a  comfortable 
room  in  a  small  but  neat  house  in  the  suburbs  of  London,  and 
you  need  not  doubt  of  finding  a  most  hearty  welcome.  If  you 
come  this  winter,  it  is  very  possible  that  I  may  return  with  you 
next  Spring,  for  it  is  my  intention  to  pay  a  visit  to  America 
next  year. 

"  I  need  not  recommend  my  Daughter  to  you,  for  she  is 
already  assured  of  your  friendship.  I  hope  you  will  not  find 
her  altered  for  the  worse  in  consequence  of  her  visit  to  Europe, 
—  I  mean  mentally.  For,  with  regard  to  her  looks,  it  was  not 
to  be  expected  that  four  years  at  her  time  of  life  should  pass 
away  without  leaving  some  traces  behind  them. 

u  As  to  her  health,  it  is,  Thank  God,  now  tolerably  good, 
but  the  climate  of  Europe  certainly  has  not  agreed  with  her. 
She  was  at  one  time  dangerously  ill  at  Munich,  and  never  was 
quite  well  during  the  two  years  she  resided  in  Germany. 

"  My  Daughter  will  tell  you  what  I  am  doing  in  this  coun- 
try, and  will  acquaint  you  with  my  plans  and  wishes  respecting 
her  establishment  in  America.  If  you  can  further  the  execu- 
tion of  my  schemes,  I  have  no 'doubt  but  you  will  do  it. 
There  is  nothing  I  have  so  much  at  heart  as  to  make  my  dear 
Mother  perfectly  comfortable  and  happy  during  .the  remainder 
of  her  life. 

"  Pray  advise  and  assist  my  Daughter  in  the  accomplishment 
of  my  wishes  in  this  respect.  There  is  no  way  in  which  you 
can  so  essentially  oblige  me.  Pray  write  to  me  now  and  then, 
for  it  always  gives  me  much  pleasure  to  hear  from  you. 

"  Wishing  your  health  and  all  happiness  and  prosperity,  I  am, 
my  Dear  Friend, 

"  Yours  most  affectionately, 

"RUMFORD. 

"  The  Honb.le  COL.  BALDWIN." 

The  Countess  makes  the  following  record  :  — 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  365 

"  1799.  Brompton  Row,  No.  45,  25th  August.  The 
Count  takes  his  daughter  and  only  child  in  a  coach  and  four 
to  Gravesend,  to  embark  for  America,  in  ship  Minerva,  Cap- 
tain Turner,  under  protection  of  a  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gushing." 

Near  the  day  upon  which  the  Count  parted  with  his 
daughter  in  England,  Colonel  Baldwin  addressed  the 
following  letter  to  her  grandmother :  — 

"WOBURN,  August  29,    1799. 

"  DEAR  MADAM,  —  I  have  received  your  letter  of  the 
1 8th  ult.,  but  the  distressing  sickness  which  has  for  so  long 
time  grievously  afflicted  my  late  dear  companion  in  life,  and 
which  ended  in  her  dissolution  the  8th  inst.,  has  prevented  my 
answering  it  until  this  time.  However,  the  bills  have  been 
ready  for  your  order  ever  since  the  period  for  drawing  them 
commenced.  In  addition  to  all  my  troubles  I  have  to  lament 
with  you  that  we  are  not  to  see  that  man  favored  above  all 
men,  your  dear  son.,  and  his  daughter,  in  this  country,  the  pres- 
ent season.  For  by  two  letters  from  the  Countess  to  Mrs. 
Baldwin,  one  dated  the  i6th  day  of  March,  and  the  other  the 
6th  April  last,  which  we  received  a  little  before  Mrs.  Bald- 
win's death,  we  were  first  made  acquainted  with  this  disappoint- 
ment. Sally  was  very  well  at  the  date  of  both  these  letters, 
and  desired  to  be  remembered  to  all  her  relations  and  friends." 

"  I  have  this  day  received  a  letter  from  your  son,  the  Count, 
dated  I4th  March  last,  with  a  paragraph  in  it  which  seems  to 
belong  to  you  as  well  as  to  myself,  and  notwithstanding  there  is 
too  much  in  it  that  will  excite  our  regret,  yet  there  is  something 
also  to  elevate  and  add  satisfaction  to  the  mind.  [The  para- 
graph is  as  follows  :  (see  letter  on  page  361.)  The  portion 
quoted  is  '  I  will  not  attempt  ....  the  time  appointed.'] 

"  I  think,  madam,  that  after  this  elegant  and  reasonable 
apology,  nothing  that  I  can  say  will  do  any  good.  The  pamph- 
let which  the  Count  alludes  to  is  the  plan  of  a  new  institution 
for  founding  a  society  in  the  capital  of  the  British  dominions, 
the  principal  management  of  which,  I  understand,  is  intrusted 
to  his  care.  There  is  another  consolation  for  us,  that  although 


366  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

we  do  not  see  him  this  year,  his  visit  is  only  postponed ;  for  by  a 
paragraph  in  a  letter  he  wrote  to  Dr.  Walter,  I  find  that  he  has 
not  given  up  the  design,  but  means  to  come  out  next  spring. 

"[Sept.  8,  1799.]  I  have  asked  Mr.  Samuel  Clapp  if  he  will  be 
kind  enough  to  take  bills  and  dispose  of  them,  and  send  you  the 
proceeds,  &c.,  agreeably  to  your  desire,  and  he  says  that  he  will, 
but  advises  by  all  means  not  to  dispose  of  them  just  at  this 
time,  if  you  can  do  without,  for  bills  are  now  selling  at  ten 
per  cent  or  more  under  par.  He  thinks  they  will  be  higher  in  a 
little  time.  I  wish  you  would  let  your  son  Josiah  know  that 
his  mother  Thompson  is  very  desirous  of  seeing  him  at  Woburn 
as  soon  as  possible.  Please  to  remember  me  to  your  good  hus- 
band [he  had  been  a  partner  in  trade  with  Colonel  Baldwin], 
your  sons  and  daughters,  and  all  inquiring  friends.  I  am,  with 
much  esteem  and  respect, 

"  Your  friend  and  humble  servant, 

"LOAMMI   BALDWIN. 

"  MRS.  RUTH  PIERCE." 

The  receipts  are  copied  as  signed  by  Mrs.  Pierce  and 
her  son  Josiah,  on  the  sale  of  bills,  with  charges  for 
protest  and  interest. 

The  young  lady,  for  her  homeward  passage,  was  com- 
mitted, as  we  have  seen,  to  the  care  of  a  gentleman  and 
lady  bound  for  Boston,  who  faithfully  discharged  their 
trust.  Her  father  parted  with  her  at  Gravesend,  the 
place  of  her  embarkation.  It  was  then  his  intention  to 
follow  her  to  America  in  a  few  months,  for,  at  least,  a 
visit  to  this  country.  But  circumstances  which  he 
thought  imperative  prevented  him.  The  separation 
between  father  and  daughter,  though  not  final,  proved 
a  long  one.  She  reached  this  port  on  October  10, 
1799,  being  then  just  twenty-five  years  of  age.  Colo- 
nel Baldwin  went  to  Boston  to  receive  her  and  to  take 
her  to  his  own  home. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  367 

On  the  New  Year's  day  after  her  arrival,  Colonel 
Baldwin  and  others  of  her  own  and  her  father's  friends 
gave  a  ball  in  Woburn  in  honor  of  her  return.  cc  The 
Countess  appeared  on  the  occasion  in  one  of  her  court 
dresses,  of  blue  satin/' 

She  goes  on  with  her  personal  narrative  here  by  say- 
ing that  it  was  thought  best  on  her  return  that  she 
should  go  to  board  with  her  old  schoolmistress,  Mrs. 
Snow,  who  still  continued,  esteemed  and  active,  in  her 
employment,  having  a  select  establishment  with  heavy 
charges  and  consequently  but  few  pupils.  She  pre- 
viously made  visits  to  her  father's  honored  friend  and 
correspondent,  Colonel  Loammi  Baldwin,  at  Woburn, 
to  her  aunt  Reed's,  and  to  Concord.  Colonel  Baldwin 
records  taking  her  from  her  uncle  Reed's  to  Boston, 
on  December  11,  1799,  an<^  a^so  a  payment  for  tickets 
to  the  theatre  some  time  after  with  her,  and  a  pay- 
ment on  June  14,  1802,  to  Jephthah  Richardson  for 
housekeeping,  &c.  for  himself  and  "  the  Countess." 

Though  I  thus  anticipate  the  course  of  the  narrative 
of  Count  Rumford's  career,  it  may  be  as  well  to  follow 
the  brief  remainder  of  the  daughter's  manuscript  to  its 
close  as  it  concerns  herself. 

She  speaks  kindly  and  gratefully  of  Mrs.  Snow,  who 
received  her  cordially,  and  says  she  was  as  happy  in 
finding  herself  at  her  old  school  "as  was  consistent 
with  falling  from  heaven  to  earth."  She  proceeds  in 
her  narrative  as  follows :  — 

"  No  other  term  can  express  it.  Going  to  my  father 
young,  my  character  was  formed  by  him,  and  I  was 
accustomed  to  the  society  he  frequented.  I  presume 
that  of  Munich  and  London,  his  chief  places  of  resi- 
dence, may  be  called  the  best  in  the  world.  To  tell  the 


368  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

truth,  I  view  my  life  as  pretty  much  ended,  in  all  that  is 
worth  possessing,  when  I  quitted  my  father  at  Bromp- 
ton.  Nor  was  his  very  different  after  quitting  Munich, 
particularly  after  his  unfortunate  marriage,  —  for  cer- 
tainly marriages  like  his  cannot  be  termed  otherwise 
than  unfortunate." 

The  Countess  —  to  give  the  young  lady  the  title  that 
properly  came  to  her  —  found  her  situation  in  society 
somewhat  embarrassing,  even  though  she  was  a  school 
pupil.  She  says  she  received  much  attention,  not  only 
from  her  fellow-pupils,  but  from  many  prominent  peo- 
ple. She  was  looked  to  as  an  oracle,  and  exp'ected  to 
be  very  communicative  and  interesting  as  to  the  scenes 
and  experiences  of  her  foreign  life.  While  abroad  she 
had  been  disciplined  to  deferential  silence  and  atten- 
tion; but  the  tables  were  now  turned  upon  her,  and  she 
was  expected  to  contribute  to  the  entertainment  of  others. 
She  tried  to  perfect  herself  in  music,  though  "thumping 
and  rattling  the  keys  of  the  piano,"  was  evidently  not 
music  to  her  heart.  She  made  up  her  mind  that  this, 
being  the  sixth  or  the  seventh,  should  be  the  last,  of 
her  schools,  as  she  painfully  reminded  herself  that  she 
had  been  set  to  the  tasks  of  pupilage  in  every  place  of 
her  residence.  She  resolved  to  correct  her  faults  and 
to  increase  her  stock  of  knowledge.  •  One  of  these  faults 
was  a  dislike  of  her  needle.  She  had  actually  given 
away  a  pretty  dress  to  avoid  the  trouble  of  embroider- 
ing it.  She  resolved  to  retrieve  her  character  in  that 
respect,  and  in  -a  short  time  wrought  and  sent  to  her 
father  an  embroidered  waistcoat.  She  also  drew  cc  a  pic- 
ture of  a  shepherd  boy,  about  half  a  yard  high,  with  a 
very  beautiful  expression  of  countenance."  Remember- 
ing her  former  heart-trials,  the  Countess  adds  :  — 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  369 

"  This  picture  I  did  not  send  to  my  father,  but  only- 
told  him  about  it,  not  omitting  a  circumstance  which 
was  true,  that  the  picture  in  which  I  had  succeeded 
pretty  well,  as  all  said,  resembled  much  a  young  teacher 
we  had  in  the  school.  My  father  did  not  approve  of 
captivating  male  teachers  for  misses'  instructors.  He 
was  so  used  to  the  great  world ;  I  suppose  in  those 
places  it  was  not  thought  best.  I  am  sure  the  good  old 
hump-backed,  long-featured,  great-nosed  Alberti  he 
gave  me  for  Italian  must  have  had  great  success  among 
mothers  for  their  daughters,  under  like  prudent  pre- 
cautions.'* 

This  "handsome  teacher,"  whose  name  was  Gurley, 
she  thinks  would  have  made  great  havoc  in  the  school 
if  one  of  the  little  flock  had  not  got  the  start  of  the  rest 
by  running  away  with  him  to  New  Orleans,  where  both 
of  them  soon  after  died.  This  information  the  Count- 
ess wisely  withheld  from  her  father.  She  also  had  a 
Spanish  teacher,  and  seems  to  have  really  devoted  her- 
self to  hard  work  for  self-improvement  and  culture, 
alike  for  the  purpose  of  turning  to  account  the  advan- 
tages she  enjoyed  as  to  please  her  father.  She  says  that 
the  reason  her  father  alleged  for  not  recalling  her  to 
Europe  on  his  marriage  to  Madame  Lavoisier  was  that 
his  lady  did  not  wish  to  have  with  her  a  daughter-in- 
law.  She  herself,  however,  was  persuaded  that  her 
father  did  not  think  her  fitted  in  manners  and  acquire- 
ments to  shine  in  the  circles  which  he  and  his  mil- 
lionnaire  wife  frequented.  The  refinements  of  French 
ways  impressed  the  daughter,  but  she  could  not  easily 
assume  or  conform  to  them.  She  says  that  Madame  de 
Rumford  was  truly  a  brilliant  character,  and  it  seemed 
at  first  as  if  the  Count  had  renewed  his  youth.  He 
24 


370  Life  of  Coimt  Rumford. 

was  very  attentive  in  writing  to  his  daughter,  and  she 
counts  one  hundred  and  four  letters  as  received  from 
him  between  her  leaving  him  and  her  rejoining  him, — 
an  interval  of  eleven  years. 

She  acquiesces  in  the  wisdom  of  his  judgment  that 
she  was  better  fitted  to  live  in  this  country,  but  adds 
that  the  contrast  between  her  situation  and  his  pre- 
vented her  making  the  most  of  herself  here.  By  invita- 
tion of  a  very  rich  lady,  a  friend  of  hers,  whose  daugh- 
ters were  all  married  at  a  distance,  she  became  to  her  a 
favored  companion,  and  travelled  with  her  to  New 
York  and  Philadelphia,  and  in  the  British  Dominions. 
She  also  made  short  visits  to  the  few  relatives  who 
offered  her  their  hospitalities ;  but  she  acknowledges 
that  she  was  discontented  everywhere. 

The  following  long  letter  from  Baldwin,  though  it 
unduly  lengthens  this  chapter,  may  properly  close  it,  as 
it  belongs  to  the  period  before  us,  and  is  a  reply  to  the 
similar  extended  letter  of  the  Count. 

"  WOBURN,  November  4,  1799. 

'"  MY  DEAR  COUNT,  —  I  am  happy  in  having  an  opportunity 
of  congratulating  you  on  the  safe  arrival  of  your  amiable  daugh- 
ter in  her  native  country  again,  where  she  is  most  cordially 
received  by  strangers  as  well  as  friends.  But  one  of  the  num- 
ber of  her  dear  and  most  affectionate  friends  is  fled.  [The 
writer  then  gives  a  very  touching  account  of  the  death  of  his 
wife  on  the  8th  of  August  preceding,  after  a  distressing  illness 
of  more  than  seven  months,  and  proceeds.]  I  trust  that  this 
sketch  will  serve  to  show  that  I  have  something  whereon  to 
found  an  apology  for  not  writing  you  before. 

"  I  have  received  your  much  esteemed  favor  of  24th  August 
last  by  the  hand  of  your  daughter.  I  most  sensibly  feel  the 
sentiments  you  have  therein  so  tenderly  expressed,  and  notwith- 
standing all  the  regret  and  mortification  which  I  suffer  in  conse- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  371 

quence  of  the  disappointment  in  not  seeing  you  this  year,  I  still 
anticipate  with  pleasure  the  next  period  which  you  have  fixed 
upon  to  make  us  the  visit,  —  the  postponement  will  seem  some- 
thing like  Jacob's  second  service  for  Rachel.  I  recollect  with 
the  purity  of  youthful  fondness  the  many  pleasant  hours  spent 
when  you  were  here,  and  seem  ready  rashly  to  decide  on  the 
visit  which  you  have  with  so  much  affection  and  friendship 
invited  me  to  make.  But  when  I  consider  the  many  important 
engagements  I  have  on  hand,  it  would  certainly  be  considered 
the  height  of  imprudence  in  me  at  this  time  to  break  off  and 
abandon  them  all.  But,  however,  I  can  accept  your  own 
proposition  to  postpone  and  not  give  over  the  design.  For 
though  I  may  have  passed  the  meridian  of  life,  I  am  at  present, 
thank  God,  in  perfect  health,  and  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  good 
constitution,  which,  I  trust,  has  never  been  impaired  by  ex- 
cesses. 

"  However,  I  have  been  recently  admonished  not  to  place  too 
much  dependence  on  this.  In  the  instance  of  Mrs.  Baldwin, 
who  (the  very  evening  that  she  was  seized  with  that  distressing, 
deadly  sickness  which  chained  her  down  to  misery  for  near 
eight  months,  and  then  ended  in  death),  of  her  own  accord,  in 
the  most  agreeable  manner,  with  seeming  caution  and  modesty, 
observed  to  me  while  alone  with  her  at  supper,  being  Sunday 
evening,  how  perfectly  she  enjoyed  her  health,  her  first  friend, 
the  family,  and  life  in  general,  not  three  hours  passed  thereafter 
before  she  was  arrested,  and  Death  seemed  to  lay  his  cold  hand 
and  summoned  her  hence.  Her  physician  pretty  soon  gave  her 
over  and  resigned  her  to  that  king  of  terrors.  Not  so  her  hus- 
band, more  reluctant  still.  He  supported  a  ray  of  hope,  that 
with  all  that  source  of  youthful  strength  and  vigor  which  she 
had  before  in  so  high  a -degree  possessed,  she  might  possibly 
outlive  her  disorders,  and  have  perhaps  just  life  enough  to  build 
a  recovery  upon  ;  and  every  means  in  my  power  was  used  to 
that  end.  Sometimes  I  was  flattered,  at  other  times  discouraged, 
and  thus  was  agitated  until  the  8th  day  of  August,  when  her 
dissolution  happened,  and  put  an  end  to  ajl  exertions  and  all 
hope. 


372  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

"  But,  notwithstanding  this,  I  feel  as  great  a  desire  of  seeing 
my  best  surviving  friend,  and  the  companion  of  my  youth  and 
early  part  of  my  life,  as  ever.  And  when  I  add  to  this  that 
long-established  desire,  that  ardent  wish,  which  I  feel  for  seeing 
England  and  feasting  on  the  improvements  of  that  country,  I 
still  think  that  I  shall  visit  the  seat  of  science. 

"  In  the  arrangement  of  my  pursuits,  when  the  power  is  in 
me  to  choose,  I  have  deviated  perhaps  from  the  general  run  of 
mankind,  for  I  would  wish  to  apply  the  last  day  of  my  labors  to 
plan  and  execute  a  canal,  or  plant  out  an  orchard,  or  something 
that  would  result  in  some  permanent  benefit  for  posterity. 

"  We  have  had  the  pleasure  of  your  daughter's  company  a 
few  days,  and  the  inexpressible  satisfaction  of  hearing  from  her 
mouth  the  circumstances  of  the  first  interview  with  her  father, 
and  how  deeply  you  are  engaged  in  philanthropic  pursuits,  also 
some  of  the  interesting  events  that  have  happened  during  her 
absence  from  America,  and  are  exceedingly  pleased  with  the 
improvement  of  her  mind. 

"  I  have  received  three  letters  from  you  since  I  wrote  you 
last  by  Mr.  Welsh  the  3ist  of  July,  1798.  The  first  of  these 
letters  was  dated  September  28,  1798,  another  March  14, 
1799,  and  the  last  by  your  daughter,  of  24th  August,  1799, 
with  the  plan  of  your  new  Institution,  for  which  I  beg  you  to 
accept  of  my  sincere  thanks,  and  I  wish  you  Divine  success  in 
that  undertaking.  I  have  a  disciple  for  you  now  in  his  last  year 
at  Harvard  College,  reading  with  love  for  the  arts. 

"  I  am  conscious  of  my  neglect  in  not  writing  to  you  as  I 
ought  to  have  done.  I  was  about  closing  a  letter  to  you  last 
January,  to  be  accompanied  by  the  answer  from  the  inhabitants 
of  the  town  of  Concord  to  the  proposal  made  by  your  daughter 
establishing  a  fund  for  clothing  twelve  industrious  children  of 
the  poorer  class  of  citizens,  &c.  But  Dr.  Walter  happened  to 
make  me  a  visit  just  at  that  time,  and  brought  me  your  favor  of 
the  28th  September,  1798,  and  at  the  same  time  read  me  a 
paragraph  of  one  of  your  letters  to  him  that  expressed  so  fully 
your  determination  to  make  us  a  visit  in  the  spring  that  I  pro- 
ceeded no  further  in  the  business,  and  you  cannot  readily  con- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  373 

ceive  how  much  we  were  disappointed  when  we  came  to  find 
out  that  neither  you  nor  your  daughter  were  coming  over  this 
season. 

"  However,  I  now  enclose  you  a  copy  of  the  answer  which 
the  committee  of  Concord  have  returned  to  me  on  the  subject 
of  your  daughter's  donation;  and  as  they  seem  to  have  a  dis- 
position to  vary  the  plan,  I  have  also  prepared  you  a  copy  of  the 
letter  which  I  addressed  to  them  on  the  subject,  that  you  may 
see  the  whole  transaction. 

"  I  saw  Judge  Walker  and  Mr.  Rolfe  last  winter  again,  both 
of  them  in  one  day,  but  not  together.  I  was  flattered  with  their 
conversation  upon  the  old  subject,  and  was  led  to  believe  that  a 
settlement  such  as  you  wish  would  have  been  effected  before 
this  time,  and  was  surprised  to  find  by  your  letter  of  the  I4th 
of  March  last,  that  Mr.  Rolfe  had  forwarded  any  such  thing  as 
a  demand,  especially  after  what  had  passed  between  him  and 
myself,  which  was,  in  my  view  of  the  matter,  tantamount  to  a 
promise  to  close  with  your  proposition.  However,  I  cannot 
say  but  what  there  appeared  a  kind  of  reserve  in  him.  1  have 
seen  him  since  your  daughter  has  returned,  and  had  a  more 
serious  conversation  than  ever.  I  urged  the  matter  home.  He 
told  me  that  he  believed  you  misunderstood  his  meaning  in  send- 
ing you  the  statement  he  did.  He  spoke  respectfully  of  you, 
and  was  very  sorry  if  you  had  misconceived  his  intention.  He 
expressed  himself  in  terms  purporting  the  strongest  friendship 
for  you  and  his  sister. 

"  I  suspect  that  he  does  not  feel  perfectly  satisfied  with  his 
uncle  Walker's  statement  respecting  some  debts  which  have 
been  rendered  desperate,  and  wishes  to  bring  his  uncle  to  com- 
pound with  him,  and  give  up  a  balance  due  his  uncle  on  the 
settlement  of  his  guardian  accounts.  However  that  may  be, 
Sally  has  set  out  this  day  from  my  house  for  Concord,  with  this 
advice  from  me,  to  push  with  manly  firmness  the  settlement 
with  her  uncle  and  brother  as  far  as  her  influence  will  go,  and 
then,  if  she  cannot  effect  it,  to  write  me  word,  and  I  will  (sick- 
ness or  death  only  excepted)  go  immediately  up  and  assist  her. 

"  I  have  already  been  pretty  serious  with  Rolfe  in  preparing 


374  Life  of  Coimt  Rumford. 

the  way  ;  and  notwithstanding  there  appears  in  him  a  strange 
kind  of  evasion,  yet  I  still  think  that  we  shall  succeed  in  mak- 
ing the  settlement. 

"  I  have  with  particular  pleasure  attended  to  your  proposition 
of  forming  for  yourself  a  little  quiet  retreat  in  America,  and 
made  your  proposed  scheme  known  to  a  few  of  our  best  friends, 
who  have  most  cheerfully  afforded  me  their  aid  in  search  of  a 
spot  worthy  your  attention.  There  are  several  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Cambridge  that  have  been  mentioned  ;  some  of  the 
most  eligible  I  fear  are  not  just  at  present  come-at-able.  How- 
ever, we  can  raise  a  most  powerful  influence  when  it  comes  to 
the  case  in  hand.  Meantime  I  shall  continue  upon  the  look 
out. 

"  Your  dear  mother  is  again  a  widow.  Her  late  husband, 
Mr.  Pierce,  died  on  or  about  the  i8th  of  August  last,  at  Flints 
town,  on  Saco  River,  where  they  have  lived  for  a  number  of 
years  past.  Josiah  Pierce,  Esq.,  their  oldest  son,  who  is  now 
with  me  here  on  a  visit  from  Flintstown,  informs  me  that  your 
mother  is  not  in  quite  so  good  health  as  she  has  been  for  some 
years  past,  but  is  at  Portland  with  her  youngest  daughter,  Han- 
nah Douglass,  who  is  much  out  of  health  at  this  time,  but  not 
considered  immediately  dangerous. 

"  I  have  drawn  a  set  of  exchange  for  your  mother  on  your 
bankers  in  London  for  £30  sterling,  dated  the  26th  of  March 
last,  as  usual,  and  delivered  them  to  Josiah  Pierce,  Esq.,  agree- 
ably to  your  mother's  request.  I  suppose  that  your  daughter 
will  draw  for  her  in  future.  However,  in  this  or  in  any  and 
every  thing  else,  as  far  as  lies  in  my  power,  I  shall  cheerfully 
contribute  to  her  comfort,  nor  shall  I  fail  to  assist  Sally  in  car- 
rying her  plans  for  an  establishment  into  effect  agreeably  to  your 
wishes. 

"  I  have  a  favor  to  ask  of  you,  my  dear  sir,  and  I  feel  confi- 
dent that  you  will  indulge  me  in  the  request  I  am  about  to  make. 
I  have  already  told  you  that  I  have  a  son  at  College  whose  genius 
inclines  him  strongly  to  cultivate  the  arts,  and  I  think  it  rather 
doubtful  whether  he  will  apply  his  studies  to  either  of  the  three 
learned  professions  with  that  success  as  to  become  eminent.  I 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  375 

have,  therefore,  thought  whether  it  would  not  be  best  to  en- 
deavor to  provide  him  a  place  for  a  year  or  two  with  some 
gentleman  in  the  mathematical  line  of  business  in  Europe,  who 
is  actually  in  the  occupation  of  making  and  vending  mathe- 
matical and  optical  instruments  in  an  eminent  degree  ;  perhaps 
a  character  something  similar  to  what  the  late  Mr.  George 
Adams  of  London  was,  might  suit.  It  may  be  that  you  know 
of  some  good  place.  In  this  I  wish  for  your  good  assistance  so 
far  as  to  make  inquiry  whether  he 'could  get  admitted,  what  the 
terms  would  be,  what  kind  of  rank  he  would  be  considered  to 
have  in  such  a  place,  where  he  might  work  at  some  branches  of 
the  business  as  well  as  attend  on  customers;  in  short,  I  wish  to 
know  all  about  it.  Perhaps  he  may  settle  a  profitable  corre- 
spondence in  trade  with  the  same  gentleman  when  he  comes  to 
return  to  this  country  again.  He  is  very  lively,  ready,  and 
enterprising,  and  has  ever  sustained  a  good  character.  I  have 
raised  expectations  of  his  usefulness,  if  I  can  but  hit  his  prevail- 
ing genius. 

u  I  have'also  one  favor  more  to  ask,  which  is  to  request  your 
attention  to  the  little  memorandum  that  I  have  taken  the  liberty 
to  enclose,  for  a  number  of  articles  which  I  cannot  readily  pro- 
cure here,  and  the  amount  of  the  bill  I  will  pay  to  your  mother 
or  your  daughter,  or  remit  it  to  yourself,  as  you  may  please  to 
order. 

"  In  the  cask  of  fruit  which  your  daughter  and  Mr.  Rolfe 
have  sent  you,  there  is  half  a  dozen  apples  of  the  growth  of  my 
farm,  wrapped  up  in  papers  with  the  name  of  Baldwin  apples 
written  upon  them.  If  those  apples  should  continue  in  a  state 
of  preservation  until  you  receive  them,  and  you  happen  to  be  in 
company  with  any  good  connoisseurs  in  the  distinguishing  char- 
acter of  that  kind  of  fruit,  it  would  gratify  me  much  to  know 
the  true  English  name  of  it.  However,  I  rather  doubt  whether 
the  nice  characters  of  this  apple  will  answer  exactly  to  any  par- 
ticular species  of  English  fruit,  as  it  is  (I  believe)  a  spontane- 
ous production  of  this  country,  that  is,  it  was  not  originally 
engrafted  fruit. 

"  I  have  made  an  apology  for  not  writing  you  so  much,  and 


376  Life  of  Coiint  Rumford. 

now  I  must  make  one  for  writing  more  than  I  ought.  But  I 
feel  confident  that  your  goodness  will  excuse  both.  I  entreat 
of  you  to  write  me  at  all  opportunities,  and  tell  me  how  you 
progress  in  your  new  Institution. 

"Judge"  Blodget  of  Goffstown,  N.  H.,  whom  you  know, 
and  Dr.  Hay,  have  both  desired  me  to  present  their  respects  to 
you. 

"  I  am,  with  the  most  unfeigned  affection  and  esteem,  my 
dear  Count,  \ 

14  Yours  sincerely, 

«LOAMMI    BALDWIN. 

"  BENJAMIN,  Count  of  Rumford." 

"  Memorandum  for  London,  to  the  care  of  Count  Rumford. 

"4  thermometers  exactly  corresponding  with  each  other 
through  all  the  degrees  of  graduation,  plainly  mounted  in 
manner  suited  to  endure  in  experiments  where  a  pretty  severe 
heat  is  required  ;  the  other  two  a  little  in  the  elegant  style. 

"  I  mercurial  barometer. 

u  i  ream  of  pretty  large  size  lawn  paper,  thin  and  light,  but 
of  a  strong  and  compact  fabric,  suitable  to  make  a  balloon  for 
experiments  in  natural  electricity. 

"  Two  or  three  crowns'  worth  of  fine  gold  or  silver  wire  for 
to  entwine  about  the  flying  line  of  an  electrical  kite  or  balloon  ; 
perhaps  gold  thread  wire  before  it  be  flattened  might  answer. 

"  Some  of  the  best  transparent  liquor  varnish  for  preserving 
the  brightness  or  polish  of  brass  work,  with  directions  for  using 
it ;  say,  to  the  amount  in  value  of  three  or  four  crowns. 

"  i  good  collar-mandrel  for  a  turning-lathe,  provided  with 
spiral  threads  or  screws  on  the  spindle  of  the  whirl,  for  the 
purpose  of  cutting  screws  in  the  lathe,  of  different  combs,  or 
threads  ;  also  the  tools  to  be  used  in  working  the  lathe  for  cut- 
ting screws. 

"  i  boiler  of  the  most  improved  kind  for  cooking,  of  about 
thirty  gallons'  capacity. 

"  i  boiler  of  abour  ten  or  fifteen  gallons,  upon  the  Rumford 
plan. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  377 

"  2  nice  measuring  tapes,  of  two  poles  or  fifty  links  of  the 
chain  in  length  ;  enclosed  in  cases,  &c. 

u  A  magnet,  natural  or  artificial,  highly  affected,  suitable  for 
impregnating  the  needles  of  the  compass. 

"  i  set  of  glasses  for  a  lucernal  microscope. 

"  I  have  an  1 8-inch  reflecting  telescope,  the  tube  of  which 
is  about  2|  inches'  diameter,  but  the  reflector  and  speculum  in 
both  a  little  sullied  or  tarnished.  I  wish  to  know  whether 
they  can  be  repolished  and  put  in  order  without  the  whole  in- 
strument being  sent  with  them,  and  what  the  expense  would 
be  of  doing  it. 

"  Yours, 

"L.  BALDWIN. 

"  The  above  letter  sent  by  the  Minerva." 

There  is  an  interesting  story  connected  with  the 
"  Baldwin  apples "  referred  to  in  the  preceding  let- 
ter. The  tree  from  which  came  the  scions  that  have 
now  so  widely  propagated  that  very  popular  apple 
grew  on  a  hillside  in  Medford  near  the  Woburn  line. 
The  trunk  of  the  tree  having  been  drilled  by  wood- 
peckers, the  fruit  was  known  as  the  "  Woodpecker 
apple,"  soon  shortened  into  "  Peckers."  The  tra- 
dition is,  that  Baldwin  and  Thompson  first  learned 
the  excellent  quality  of  the  fruit  on  one  of  their  walks 
to  Professor  Winthrop's  lectures.  If  this  be  true, 
it  is  strange  that  Baldwin  made  no  reference  to  the 
incident  when  sending  the  apples  to  Rumford.  .  The 
Colonel  had  given  some  scions  of  the  tree  to  a  nursery- 
gardener,  who  named  the  fruit  from  the  donor.  The 
old  tree  fell  in  the  September  gale  of  1815.* 

#  Brooks's  History  of  Medford,  pp.  19,  20. 


CHAPTER    VII. 

Count  Rumford  as  Founder  of  the  Royal  Institution  of  Great 
Britain.  —  His  Plan  and  Proposals.  —  Correspondence 
with  Thomas  Bernard.  —  Sketch  of  the  Objects  and 
Principles  of  the  Institution.  —  Government  to  be  in- 
formed of  the  Design.  —  Meetings  of  Managers.  —  Char- 
ter and  Organization.  —  Generous  Patronage  by  the 
Nobility.  —  Prospectus.  —  Building  provided  for  the  In- 
stitution. —  Rumford *s  Generous  Gifts.  -*-  He  resides  in 
the  Institution.  —  His  Illness.  - —  Dr.  Young  appointed 
Professor^  Editor  of  Journal,  and  Superintendent.  — 
Rumford  visits  Harrowgate.  —  His  Essay  on  Warm 
Bathing.  —  Correspondence.  —  Colonel  Baldwin.  —  Presi- 
•  dent  John  Adams.  —  President  TVillard.  —  The  Count's 
Letter  to  Sir  H.  Davy,  inviting  him  to  the  Royal  In- 
stitution. —  Faraday  s  Professorship  and  Directorship.  — 
Pictef  s  Visit  to  Rumford^  and  Description  of  the  House 
at  Brompton.  —  The  Bibliothfyue  Britannique  on  the  Royal 
Institution.  —  Alleged  Variances  among  the  Managers.  — 
Dr.  Young.  —  Progress  and  Course  of  the  Institution. 

THE  reasons  assigned  by  Count  Rumford  in  the 
correspondence  with  his  friends  in  America, 
given  in  the  last  chapter,  for  not  at  this  time  re- 
visiting his  native  country,  v/ere  principally  two,  —  his 
still  existing  obligations  to  the  Bavarian  government, 
and  the  absorbing  interest  with  which  he  was  engaging 
in  the  establishment  of  a  new  Institution  in  London. 
The  conception  and  plan  of  this  Institution  are  to  be 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  379 

regarded  as  exclusively  his  own.  His,  too,  was  the 
organizing  mind,  nor  can  I  discover  any  evidence  that 
he  was  induced,  or  felt  it  desirable,  to  modify  his  origi- 
nal idea  of  it,  or  to  change  the  details  of  his  plan  by 
suggestions  from  any  of  the  wise  and  earnest  advisers 
and  helpers  whom  he  engaged  in  it.  While  "he  was 
himself  one  of  the  most  zealous  and  laborious  Fellows 
of  the  Royal  Society,  he  saw  that  without  trespassing  at 
all  upon  the  range,  wide  as  it  was,  that  was  recognized 
by  his  associates,  there  was  room  for  an  Institution 
whose  aims  should  be  more  practical  and  popular,  com- 
ing into  direct  contact  with  the  agricultural,  the  me- 
chanical, and  'the  domestic  life  of  the  people.  To 
Rumford,  then,  belongs  the  signal  honor  of  creating  an 
Institution  which  has  a  most  creditable  history,  and 
which  has  been  the  medium  for  bringing  forward, 
through  the  opportunities  there  afforded  them,  many 
men  who  have  won  the  highest  distinctions  in  practical 
science. 

Count  Rumford's  spirit  and  activity  had  at  this 
period  of  his  life  become  restless,  and  perhaps  slightly 
morbid.  He  had  been  for  many  years  so  busily  en- 
gaged in  most  exacting  labors,  in  which  he  had  em- 
ployed a  large  number  of  assistants  and  subordinates, 
that  he,  beyond  most  men  even  of  marked  ability  and 
influential  position,  needed  to  have  some  conspicuous 
and  comprehensive  scheme  to  engross  his  mind  and  to 
task  his  energies.  For  reasons  soon  to  be  mentioned 
he  had  grounds  for  believing  that  his  official  position 
and  his  high  functions  in  Bavaria  would  no  longer 
secure  him  such  opportunities  for  civil  and  military 
administration  or  high  influence  as  he  had  so  long  en- 
joyed. Failing,  to  his  great  chagrin,  of  reception  in 


380  Life  of  Coitnt  Rumford. 

his  diplomatic  functions  in  England,  it  would  seem 
that  his  disappointment  affected  his  spirits.  He  did 
not  relax  in  any  degree  his  benevolent  efforts,  and  he 
resolutely  maintained  and  pursued  the  leading  object 
of  his  whole  eminently  beneficent  career,  namely,  the 
making  of  all  the  inquiries  and  discoveries  of  science 
available  for  the  direct  relief,  service,  and  comfort  of 
the  common  people.  It  will  be  observed  that  the 
Count  refers  to  a  publication  of  his  in  1796,  as -con- 
taining a  suggestion  of  his  first  idea  of  his  Institution. 
As  we  come  to  read  his  own  account  of  it,  and  follow 
it  out  in  its  details  of  objects  and  methods,  we  shall  be 
satisfied  that  it  was  no  extemporized  scheme  which  was 
hastily  devised,  but  that  it  had  been  long  and  carefully 
elaborated  by  a  patient  development  of  an  idea  which 
he  had  cherished  in  his  own  mind  for  several  years. 
We  may  well  share  the  surprise  which  he  himself  ex- 
pressed, that  an  Institution  answering,  in  some  general 
way,  at  least,  to  that  which  he  proposed,  had  not  already 
been  initiated  either  on  the  Continent  or  in  England, 
and  that  it  had  been  left  to  him  to  set  forth  the  need 
and  scope  for  it,  and  to  win  the  high  honor  of  securing 
for  it  an  existence  and  full  success. 

Count  Rumford  had  taken  special  pains,  as  indicated 
by  his  letter  to  Mr.  King,  to  have  copies  of  his  Pro- 
posals for  the  Institution  reach  this  country,  hoping 
that  a  similar  plan  would  find  its  advocates  here.  I 
have  one  of  them  before  me.  It  is  a  pamphlet  of  fifty 
pages,  bearing  the  following  title  :  *  "  Proposals  for 
forming  by  Subscription,  in  the  Metropolis  of  the 
British  Empire,  a  Public  Institution  for  diffusing  the 
Knowledge  and  facilitating  the  general  Introduction  of 

*   It  is  in  the  possession  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  381 

useful  Mechanical  Inventions  and  Improvements,  and 
for  teaching,  by  courses  of  Philosophical  Lectures  and 
Experiments,  the  Application  of  Science  to  the  Common 
Purposes  of  Life."  This  copy,  bearing  the  autograph 
of  Count  Rumford,  was  presented  by  him  "  To  his 
Excellency  John  Adams,"  as  from  "  one  of  the  Man- 
agers of  the  Institution,"  and  was  printed  in  London 
in  1799.*  The  Introduction,  signed  by  Rumford,  is 
dated  from  Brompton  Row,  4th  March,  in  that  year, 
and  makes  nearly  half  of  the  pamphlet,  giving  a  very 
admirable  account  of  the  origin  of  the  Institution.  Dr. 
Franklin  himself  never  wrote  an  essay  indicating  a  more 
practical  sagacity,  or  expressed  in  a  more  direct  and 
forcible  style  of  lucid  composition,  than  characterize 
this  piece  of  Rumford's.  His  aim,  he  says,  is  to  bring 
about  a  cordial  embrace  between  science  and  art,  by 
enlightening  and  removing  prejudice  against  changes, 
inventions,  and  improvements,  and  by  establishing  re- 
lations of  helpful  intercourse  between  philosophers  and 
practical  workmen.  He  would  engage  their  united 
efforts  for  the  improvement  of  agriculture,  manufac- 
tures, and  commerce,  and  for  the  increase  of  domestic 
comfort.  He  says:  "  The  pre  eminence  of  any  people 
is,  and  ought  ever  to  be,  estimated  by  the  state  of  taste, 
industry,  and  mechanical  improvement  among  them." 
"  The  vivifying  rays  of  science,  when  properly  directed, 

*  Dr.  H.  Bence  Jones,  the  Secretary  of  the  Royal  Institution,  has  kindly  sent 
me  a  copy  of  the  reprint  of  these  "  Proposals,  &c."  which  was  published  in  May, 
1870. 

He  introduces  this  reprint  with  the  following  prefatory  note  :  — 

"  No  copy  of  this  Prospectus,  printed  in  1799,  exists  in  the  Library  of  the  Royal 
Institution.  Happily  two  copies  have  been  preserved,  the  one  at  Althorp,  and  the 
other  at  the  British  Museum." 

"  Through  the  kindness  of  Earl  Spencer,  the  Managers  have  been  able  to  order  this 
very  early  Record  of  the  Institution  to  be  reprinted." 


382  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

tend  to  excite  the  activity  and  increase  the  energy  of  an 
enlightened  nation."  "  It  will  not  escape  observation 
that  I  have  placed  the  management  of  fire  among  the  very 
first  subjects  of  useful  improvement,  and  it  is  possible 
that  I  may  be  accused  of  partiality  in  placing  the  object 
of  my  favorite  pursuits  in  that  cpnspicuous  situation. 
But  how  could  I  have  done  otherwise  ?  .  I  have  always 
considered  it  as  being  a  subject  very  interesting  to  man- 
kind ;  and  it  was  on  that  account  principally,  that,  at  a 
very  early  period  of  my  life,  I  enga'ged  in  its  investiga- 
tion ;  and  the  more  I  have  examined  it  and  meditated 
upon  it,  the  more  I  have  been  impressed  with  its  im- 
portance." One  is  pleased  with  the  wisdom  of  his 
homely  earnestness,  in  the  fact  that  he  could  then  offer 
as  novelties  such  suggestions  as  these  :  that  arts  and 
manufactures  of  every  kind  depend,  directly  or  indi- 
rectly, on  operations  in  which  fire  is  employed  ;  that 
the  comforts  and  conveniences  of  human  ingenuity  are 
obtained  through  its  assistance ;  that  fuel  costs  the 
kingdom  more  than  ten  millions  sterling  annually,  and 
that  much  more  than  half  the  fuel  that  is  consumed 
might  be  saved. 

The  writer  adds  a  brief  account  of  the  history  of 
these  "  Proposals,"  and  of  the  causes  which  gave  rise 
to  them.  He  avows  that  he  had  long  been  in  the  habit 
of  regarding  all  useful  improvements  as  dependent 
upon  mechanical  agencies  and  the  perfection  of  ma- 
chinery, with  skill  in  the  management  of  it,  and  of 
considering  that  the  profit  to  be  thus  gained  was  the 
chief  incitement  to  industry.  The  plan  which  he  now 
offers  to  the  public  is  the. result  of  his  own  meditations 
as  to  the  means  that  might  most  wisely  be  employed  to " 
facilitate  the  general  introduction  of  such  improvements. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  383 

cc  In  the  beginning  of  the  year  1796  I  gave  a  faint 
sketch  of  this  plan  in  my  second  Essay  ;  but  being 
under  the  necessity  of  returning  soon  to  Germany,  I 
had  not  leisure  to  pursue  it  farther  at  that  time;  and  I 
was  obliged  to  content  myself  with  having  merely 
thrown  out  a  loose  idea,  as  it  were  by  accident,  which 
I  thought  might  possibly  attract  attention.  After  rriy 
return  to  Munich,  I  opened  myself  more  fully  on  the 
subject  in  my  correspondence  with  my  friends  in  this 
country  [England],  and  particularly  in  my  letters  to 
Thomas  Bernard,  Esq.,  who,  as  is  well  known,  is  one 
of  the  founders  and  most  active  members  of  the  So- 
ciety for  bettering  the  Condition  and  increasing  the  Com- 
forts of  the  Poor."* 

The  Count  subjoins,  in  a  note,  three  letters  of  his  to 
Mr.  Bernard,  dated  at  Munich,  28th  April,  1797,  ijth 
May,  1798,  and  8th  June,  1798.  The  first  of  these 
letters  returns  the  writer's  grateful  acknowledgments 
for  the  honor  done  him  by  his  election  as  a  member  of 
the  Society  for  bettering  the  condition  of  the  poor.  It 
closes  with  a  characteristic  suggestion  that  visible  ex- 
amples, "by  models,"  will  advance  its  objects  better 
than  will  anything  that  can  be  said  or  written.  The 
third  letter  emphasizes  a  well-pointed  hint,  that  indolent, 
selfish,  and  luxurious  persons  "  must  either  be  allured 

*  In  the  Gentleman's  Magazine,  Vol.  LXXXVIII.,  for  1818,  p.  82,  there  is  an 
obituary  notice  of  Sir  Thomas  Bernard,  third  son  of  Sir  Francis,  Royal  Governor  of 
Massachusetts,  from  which  the  following  is  an  extract  :  "In  1799,  on  the  suggestion 
of  Count  Rumford,  he  set  on  foot  the  plan  of  the  Royal  Institution  ;  for  which  the 
King's  Charter  was  obtained  on  the  I3th  of  January,  1800,  which  has  been  of  emi- 
nent service  in  affording  a  school  for  useful  knowledge  to  the  young  people  of  the 
metropolis,  and  in  bringing  forward  to  public  notice  many  learned  and  able  men  in 
the  capacity  of  lecturers;  and  most  of  all,  in  its  laboratory  being  the  cradle  of  the 
transcendent  discoveries  of  Sir  Humphry  Davy,  which  have  benefited  and  enlightened 
Europe  and  the  whole  world." 


384  Life  of  Count  RumforcL 

or  shamed  into  action,1'  and  that  it  is  very  desirable 
"to  make  benevolence  fashionable."  The  writer  also 
expresses  his  interest  in  his  correspondent's  "plan  with 
regard  to  Bridewell.  A  well-arranged  House  of  In- 
dustry is  much  wanted  in  London."  He  closes  by 
asking  Mr.  Bernard  "  to  read  once  more  the  Proposals 
published  in  my  second  Essay.  I  really  think  that  a 
public  establishment  like  that  there  described  might 
easily  be  formed  in  London,  and  that  it  would  produce 
infinite  good.  I  will  come  to  London  to  assist  you  in 
its  execution  whenever  you  will  in  good  earnest  under- 
take it." 

Returning  to  England  in  September,  1798,  the  Count 
says  he  found  Mr.  Bernard  very  solicitous  for  an  at- 
tempt for  the  immediate  execution  of  the  plan.  "After 
several  consultations  that  were  held  in  Mr.  Bernard's 
apartments  in  the  Foundling  Hospital,  and  at  the  house 
of  the  Lord  Bishop  of  Durham,  at  which  several  gentle- 
men assisted  who  are  well  known  as  zealous  promoters 
of  useful  improvements,  it  was  agreed  that  Mr.  Ber- 
nard should  report  to  the  Committee  of  the  Society  for 
bettering  the  Condition  of  the  Poor  the  general  result 
of  these  consultations,  and  the  unanimous  desire  of  the 
gentlemen  who  assisted  at  them  that  means  might  be 
devised  for  making  an  attempt  to  carry  the  scheme 
proposed  into  execution." 

As  the  Count  had  thus,  for  convenience*  sake,  availed 
himself  of  the  interest  which  had  already  drawn  together 
in  associated  action  a  body  of  gentlemen  organized  into 
a  benevolent  society,  and  as  the  report  on  his  new 
project  was  to  be  made  by  a  committee  of  that  society, 
he  was  at  once  concerned  to  secure  from  the  start  the 
independent  existence,  activity,  and  membership  of  the 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  385 

proposed  Institution.  The  committee  agreed  with  him, 
that  the  objects  of  the  Institution  were  too  interesting 
and  important  to  allow  of  its  being  made  "an  appendix 
to  any  other  existing  establishment,"  and,  therefore, 
that  it  ought  to  stand  alone,  on  its  own  proper  basis. 
Eight  members  of  the  above-named  society  were  ap- 
pointed to  confer  with  him  on  his  plan.*  Meeting 
with  this  committee  on  the  3ist  of  January,  1799,  the 
Count  presented  them  with  an  elaborate  and  complete 
working  plan  for  an  Institution,  which  they  unani- 
mously approved.  It  was  thought,  however,  that 
the  plan  .entered  too  much  into  details  for  submission 
to  the  public  in  the  existing  stage  of  the  enterprise,  and 
therefore  the  Count  revised  and  modified  it,  sending  a 
corrected  copy  of  it  to  each  member  of  the  committee, 
accompanied  by  a  letter  as  follows :  — 

"GENTLEMEN,  —  Inclosed  I  have  the  honour  to  send  you  a 
corrected  copy  of  the  Proposals  I  took  the  liberty  of  laying  be- 
fore you  on  Thursday  last,  for  forming  in  this  capital,  by  private 
subscription,  a  Public  Institution  for  diffusing  the  knowledge 
and  facilitating  the  general  and  speedy  introduction  of  new  and 
useful  mechanical  inventions  and  improvements  ;  and  also  for 
teaching,  by  regular  courses  of  Philosophical  Lectures  and  Ex- 
periments, the  application  of  the  new  discoveries  in  science  to 
the  improvement  of  arts  and  manufactures,  and  in  facilitating 
the  means  of  procuring  the  comforts  and  conveniences  of  life. 

"  The  tendency  of  the  proposed  Institution  to  excite  a  spirit 
of  inquiry  and  of  improvement  amongst  all  ranks  of  society, 
and  to  afford  the  most  effectual  assistance  to  those  who  are 
engaged  in  the  various  pursuits  of  useful  industry,  did  not  escape 
your  observation  ;  and  it  is,  I  am  persuaded,  from  a  conviction 

*  These  gentlemen  were,  the  Earl  of  Winchilsea,  Mr.  Wilberforce,  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Ghsse,  Mr.  Sulivan,  Mr.  Richard  Sullivan,  Mr.  Colquhoun,  Mr.  Parry,  and  Mr. 
Bernard. 

25 


386  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

of  the  utility  of  the  plan,  or  its  tendency  to  increase  the  com- 
forts and  enjoyments  of  individuals,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
piomote  the  public  prosperity,  that  you  have  been  induced  to 
take  it  into  your  serious  consideration.  I  shall  be  much  flat- 
tered if  it  should  meet  with  your  approbation  and  with  your 
support. 

"  Though  I  am  perfectly  ready  to  take  any  share  in  the 
business  of  carrying  the  scheme  into  execution,  in  case  it 
should  be  adopted,  that  can  be  required,  yet  there  is  one  pre- 
liminary request  which  I  am  desirous  may  be  granted  me  ;  and 
that  is,  that  Government  may  be  previously  made  acquainted 
with  the  scheme  before  any  steps  are  taken  towards  carrying  it 
into  execution  ;  and  also  that  his  Majesty's  ministers  may  be 
informed  that  it  is  the  contemplation  of  the  Founders  of  the 
Institution  to  accept  of  my  services  in  the  arrangement  and 
management  of  it. 

u  The  peculiar  situation'  in  which  I  stand  in  this  country,  as 
a  subject  of  his  Majesty,  and  being  at  the  same  time,  by  his 
Majesty's  special  permission,  granted  under  his  royal  sign- 
manual,  engaged  in  the  service  of  a  Foreign  Prince, — this  cir- 
cumstance renders  it  improper  for  me  to  engage  myself  in  this 
important  business,  notwithstanding  that  it  might,  perhaps,  be 
considered  merely  as  a  private  concern,  without  the  knowledge 
and  the  approbation  of  Government. 

u  I  am  quite  certain  that  my  engaging  in  this,  or  in  any  other 
business  in  which  there  is  any  prospect  of  my  being  of  any  pub- 
lic use  in  this  country,  will  meet  with  the  most  cordial  appro- 
bation of  his  Most  Serene  Highness,  the  Elector  Palatine,  in 
whose  service  I  am,  —  for  I  know  his  sentiments  on  that  subject ; 
and  although  I  do  not  imagine  that  his  Majesty,  or  his  Maj- 
esty's ministers,  would  disapprove  of  my  giving  my  assistance  in 
carrying  this  scheme  into  execution,  yet  I  feel  it  to  be  necessary 
that  their  approbation  should  be  asked  and  obtained  ;  and,  if  I 
might  be  allowed  to  express  my  sentiments  on  another  matter, 
which,  no  doubt,  has  already  occurred  to  every  one  of  the 
Gentlemen  to  whom  I  now  address  myself,  I  should  say  that, 
in  my  opinion,  it"  would  not  only  be  proper,  but  even  ne- 


Life  of  Coitnt  Rumford.  387 

ccssary,  to  inform  Government  of  the  nature  of  the  scheme 
that  is  proposed,  and  of  every  circumstance  relative  to  it,  and 
at  the  same  time  to  ask  their  countenance  and  support  in  carry- 
ing it  into  execution  ;  for  although  it  may  be  allowable  in  this 
free  country  for  individuals  to  unite  in  forming  and  executing 
extensive  plans  for  diffusing  useful  knowledge,  and  promoting 
the  public  good,  yet  it  appears  to.  me  that  no  such  establish- 
ment should  ever  be  formed  in  any  country  without  the  knowl- 
edge and  approbation  of  the  Executive  Government. 

"  Trusting  that  you  will  be  so  good  as  to  excuse  the  liberty 
I  take  in  making  this  observation,  and  that  you  will  consider  my 
doing  it  as  being  intended  rather  to  justify  myself  by  explaining 
my  principles  than  from  any  idea  of  its  being  necessary  on  any 
othei  account,  I  have  the  honour  to  be,  with  much  respect, 
Gentlemen, 

u  Your  most  obedient  and  Most  humble  Servant, 

"RUMFORD. 

"  BROMPTON  Row,  7*  February,  1799. 

[Addressed]  "  To  the  Gentlemen  named  by  the  Committee 
of  the  Society  for  bettering  the  condition  of  the  Poor,  to  confer 
with  Count  Rumford  on  his  scheme  for  forming  a  new  Estab- 
lishment in  London  for  diffusing  the  Knowledge  of  useful  Me- 
chanical Improvements,  &c." 

The  committee  above  named  had  in  the  mean  while 
held  a  meeting  on  the  ist  of  February,  the  Bishop  of 
Durham  in  the  chair,  and,  after  reporting  their  confer- 
ence with  the  Count,  gave  their  full  approbation  to  the 
proposed  project.  In  order  to  provide  funds  for  initi- 
ating the  society,  it  was  proposed  that  subscribers  of 
fifty  guineas  each  should  be  the  perpetual  proprietors 
of  the  Institution,  and  be  entitled  to  perpetual  trans- 
ferable tickets  for  the  lectures,  and  for  admission  to  the 
apartments  of  the  Institution  ;  and  that  as  soon  as 
thirty  such  subscribers  should  be  obtained  a  meeting  of 
them  should  be  called  for  the  consideration  of  a  plan, 


388  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

and  for  the  election  of  managers.  The  report  of  the 
committee  was  approved,  and  they  were  requested  to 
take  measures  for  carrying  its  suggestions  into  effect,  as 
well  as  to  draw  the  outlines  of  a  plan  for  the  Institution. 

This  preliminary  work  being  accomplished,  the  com- 
mittee circulated  among  their  friends  and  others  whom 
they  thought  likely  to  favor  the  scheme,  a  paper  of 
proposals  soliciting  subscriptions,  and  requested  them 
to  reply  by  letters  addressed  "To  Thomas  Bernard/Esq., 
at  the  Foundling." 

Fifty-eight  most  respectable  names  had  been  sent  in 
before  arrangements  could  be  made  for  a  meeting  of  the 
subscribers ;  and  this  hearty  response  induced  some 
change  in  the  plan  in  respect  to  the  first  choice  of 
managers,  and  in  regard  to  an  application  for  a  char- 
ter before  any  further  organization. 

Count  Rumford,  at  this  stage  of  the  business,  and 
before  a  meeting  of  the  subscribers  had  been  held,  ad- 
dressed to  them  a  pamphlet  containing  all  the  matters 
that  have  been  thus  summarized.  It  was  dated  from 
Brompton  Row,  4th  March,  1799,  and  was  intended 
to  prepare  them  for  the  meeting  soon  to  follow.  He 
expressed  his  readiness  to  take  any  part  that  might 
be  desired. 

<c  The  Proposals,  &c.,"  evidently  from  the  pen  of 
the  Count,  are  then  set  forth  in  the  pamphlet,  and  con- 
tain a  complete  plan  for  the  organization,  administra- 
tion, and  support  of  the  Institution,  with  minute  speci- 
fications of  its  objects,  when  carried  into  details. 

Those  objects,  first  stated  comprehensively,  are  "  the 
speedy  and  general  diffusion  of  the  knowledge  of  all 
new  and  useful  improvements,  in  whateVer  quarter  of 
the  world  they  may  originate ;  and  teachmgXthe  ap- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  389 

plication  of  scientific  discoveries  to  the  improvement 
of  arts  and  manufactures  in  this  country,  and  to  the 
increase  of  domestic  comfort  and  convenience."  Efforts 
were  to  be  made  to  confine  the  Institution  to  its  proper 
limits,  to  give  it  a  solid  foundation,  and  to  make  it  an 
ornament  to  the  capital  and  an  honor  to  the  nation. 
Spacious  and  airy  rooms  were  to  be  provided  for  re- 
ceiving and  exhibiting  such  new  mechanical  inventions 
and  improvements,  especially  such  contrivances  for 
increasing  conveniences  and  comforts,  for  promoting 
domestic  economy,  for  improving  taste,  and  for  ad- 
vancing useful  industry,  as  should  be  thought  worthy 
of  public  notice. 

Perfect  and  full-sized  models  of  all  such  mechanical 
inventions  and  improvements  as  would  serve  these 
ends  were  to  be  provided  and  placed  in  a  repository. 
The  following  are  the  specifications :  Cottage  fireplaces 
and  kitchen  utensils  for  cottagers  ;  a  farm-house 
kitchen,  with  its  furnishings  ;  a  complete  kitchen, 
with  utensils,  for  the  house  of  a  gentleman  of  fortune ; 
a  laundry,  including  boilers,  washing,  ironing,  and 
drying  rooms,  for  a  gentleman's  house,  or  for  a  public 
hospital ;  the  most  approved  German,  Swedish,  and 
Russian  stoves  for  heating  rooms  and  passages.  In 
order  that  visitors  might  receive  the  utmost  practical 
benefit  from  seeing  these  models,  the  peculiar  merit  in 
each  of  them  should,  as  far  as  was  possible,  be  exhibited 
in  action.  Open  chimney  fireplaces,  with  ornamental  and 
economical  grates,  and  ornamental  stoves,  made  to  rep- 
resent elegant  chimney-pieces,  for  halls  and  for  drawing 
and  eating  rooms,  were  to  be  exhibited,  with  fires  in 
them.  It  was  proposed,  likewise,  to  exhibit  "  working 
models,  on  a  reduced  scale,  of  that  most  curious  and 


390  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

most  useful  machine,  the  steam-engine";  also,  of 
brewers'  boilers,  with  improved  fireplaces  ;  of  distillers' 
coppers,  with  improved  condensers ;  of.  large  boilers 
for  the  kitchens  of  hospitals ;  and  of  ships'  coppers, 
with  improved  fireplaces.  Models  also  were  to  illus- 
trate and  to  suggest  improvements  in  ventilating  appa- 
ratus ;  in  hot-houses,  lime-kilns  and  steam-boilers  for 
preparing  food  for  •  stall-fed  cattle ;  in  the  planning 
of  cottages,  spinning-wheels,  and  looms  "  adapted  to 
the  circumstances  of  the  poor " ;  models  of  newly  in- 
vented machines  and  implements  of  husbandry;  models 
of  bridges  of  various  constructions  ;  and,  comprehen- 
sively, "  models  of  all  such  other  machines  and  useful 
instruments  as  the  managers  of  the  Institution  shall 
deem  worthy  of  the  public  notice." 

In  glancing  the  eye  over  this  summary  it  seems  as  if 
we  were  reading  backwards  the  history  of  human  in- 
genuity in  thousands  of  cases  of  successful  effort,  and 
in  innumerable  instances  of  baffled  and  disappointed, 
though  ingenious  and  devoted,  scheming  for  facilitating, 
simplifying,  and  economizing  toil,  saving  resources, 
and  multiplying  the  comforts  and  conveniences  of  hu- 
man life.  We  'have  in  Rumford's  schedule  an  in- 
ventory of  the  contents  of  a  national  patent-office, 
and  a  condensed  catalogue,  in  prospect,  of  the  contriv- 
ances of  skill  and  genius  displayed  in  the  halls  of  fairs, 
bazaars,  and  agricultural  and  mechanical  expositions.* 
Each  article  exhibited  was  to  be  accompanied  by  a  de- 

*  In  reading  the  inventory  of  the  truly  scientific  and  uWuL-artkles  which  Count 
Rumford  proposed  to  receive  into  his  repository,  it  is  interesting  to  note  the  progress 
which  had  been  made  in  England  in  such  matters  in  less  than  a  century  and  a  quar- 
ter by  comparison  with  some  of  the  contents  of  another  collection.  In  1681,  Dr. 
Grew,  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  published  under  its  patronage,  with  the  aid  of 
Daniel  Colwall,  Esq.,  who  was  at  the  charge  of  the  illustrative  engravings,  a  folio 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  391 

tailed  account  or  description  of  it,  illustrated  by  correct 
drawings,  with  the  name  and  residence  of  the  maker,  and 
the  price  at  which  he  would  furnish  it. 

The  second  great  object  of  the  Institution,  namely, 
"teaching  the  application  of  science  to  the  useful  pur- 
poses of  life,"  was  to  be  secured  by  fitting  up  a  lecture- 
room  for  philosophical  lectures  and  experiments  with  a 
complete  laboratory  and  philosophical  apparatus,  and 
all  necessary  instruments  for  chemical  and  other  experi- 
ments. This  lecture-room  is  to  be  used  for  no  other 
purposes  but  those  of  natural  philosophy  and  philo- 
sophical chemistry,  and  it  is  to  be  made  comfortable 
and  salubrious  for  subscribers.  The  most  eminent  and 
distinguished  expounders  of  science  are  to  be  exclusively 
engaged,  and  the  managers  are  to  be  strictly  responsible 
for  their  rigid  restriction  of  their  discourses  to  the  sub- 
jects committed  to  them.  If  there  is  spare  room,  non- 
subscribers  may  be  admitted  for  a  small  fee. 

The  subjects  proposed  for  the  lectures  include  the 
following:  —  Heat  and  its  application;  the  economizing 
of  heat  from  the  combustion  of  inflammable  bodies  used 
as  fuel;  the  principles  of  warmth  in  clothing;  the  effects 
of  heat  and  cold  on  the  human  body  in  sickness  and  in 

volume  of  4-?  5  pages,  and  31  engraved  sheets,  with  the  following  title:  "  Mttsatum 
Regalis  Societatis ;  or,  A  Catalogue  and  Description  of  the  Natural  and  Artificial 
Raritys  belonging  to  the  Royal  Society,  and  preserved  at  Gresham  College;  where- 
unto  is  subjoined  the  Comparative  Anatomy  of  the  Stomach  and  Guts."  The  next 
year  it  was  ordered  that  the  Doctor  assume  the  charge  of  the  repository,  under  the  title 
of  Prafectus  Musei,  &c.,  and  "  make  a  short  Catalogue  of  the  Raritys,"  &c.  The 
Doctor's  books  are  among  the  curiosities  of  literature.  Here  are  some  of  the 
"  Raritys  "  watched  over  by  the  Royal  Society  :  — 

"  The  sceptre  of  an  Indian  king,  a  dog  without  a  mouth,  a  Pegue  hat  and 
organ,  a  Bird  of  Paradise,  a  Jewish  phylactery,  a  model  of  the  Temple  of  Jeru- 
salem, three  landskips  and  a  catcoptrick  painting  given  by  Bishop  Wilkins,  a  gun 
which  discharges  seven  times,  a  pair  of  Iceland  gloves,  .a  pot  of  Macassar  poison, 
the  tail  of  an  Indian  cow  worshipped  on  the  Ganges,  a  tuft  of  coralline,"  &c.,  &c. 


392  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

health ;  the  effects  of  breathing  bad  air ;  the  means  for 
making  dwelling-houses  comfortable  and  healthful;  the 
construction  of  ice-houses  and  the  procuring  and  pre- 
serving ice ;  means  for  preserving  food  in  different 
seasons  and  climates,  and  of  cooling  liquors  without  the 
aid  of  ice ;  the  art  of  producing,  composing,  and  adapt- 
ing manures  for  vegetation  for  different  soils ;  the 
changes  produced  in  various  substances  used  as  food 
in  the  processes  of  cookery;  the.  changes  wrought  in 
food  by  its  digestion  ;  the  chemical  principles  in  the 
process  of  tanning  leather,  with  improvements  in  that 
art ;  the  chemical  principles  in  the  arts  of  making  soap, 
of  bleaching  and  of  dyeing,  "and,  in  general,  of  all  the 
mechanical  arts,  as  they  apply  to  the  various  branches 
of  manufacture." 

It  was  proposed  to  raise  the  funds  for  the  support  of 
the  Institution  by  a  subscription  of  fifty  guineas  from 
each  of  the  proprietors  and  founders,  a  contribution  of 
ten  guineas  from  each  subscriber  for  life  and  of  two 
guineas  from  annual  subscribers,  by  donations  and  lega- 
cies that  might  reasonably  be  expected,  and  by  fees  from 
visitors  and  attendants  on  the  lectures. 

The  original  subscribers,  or  proprietors,  before  being 
called  upon  for  payment,  were  to  be  secured  against  any 
further  demands  for  contributions,  and  from  all  legal 
obligations  for  debts  that  might  afterwards  be  incurred 
by  the  managers,  through  the  terms  of  a  charter  pro- 
viding them  that  security.  These  proprietors  were 
not  to  be  compelled  to  serve  asv-rrranxagers  or  visitors 
against  their  consent  or  inclinations.  Half  of  the  sums 
subscribed  by  them  was  to  be  permanently  invested  in 
the  public  funds,  or  in  freehold  property,  that  the 
income  might  meet  the  expenses  of  the  Institution. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  393 

Each  proprietor  was  to  be  "an  hereditary  governor 
of  the  Institution,"  holding  a  perpetually  transferable 
share  in  its  property,  having  a  voice  in  the  election  of 
its  managers  and  visitors,  and  receiving  two  transfera- 
ble tickets  admitting  to  every  part  of  the  establishment 
and  to  all  the  lectures  and  experiments.  The  consent  of 
the  managers,  though  not  necessary  to  the  holding  and 
use  of  the  privileges  of  proprietorship  when  transferred 
by  inheritance  to  a  new  possessor,  should  nevertheless  be 
requisite  when  the  transfer  is  made  by  sale  or  donation. 
The  recommendations  of  proprietors  should  be  sufficient 
for  securing  admission,  when  there  is  room,  for  all  or- 
derly persons  who  may  wish  to  attend  the  Institution. 

Each  subscriber  for  life  should  receive  one  ticket,  not 
transferable,  securing  free  admission  to  every  part  of 
the  establishment  and  to  all  lectures  and  experiments. 
An  annual  subscriber  should  have  the  same  privileges 
for  a  single  year,  and  might  at  any  time  become  a  sub- 
scriber for  life  by  paying  eight  additional  guineas. 
Proprietors  and  subscribers  of  all  classes  were  to  be 
equally  entitled  to  have  drawings  or  copies  made  at 
their  own  expense,  for  themselves  or  for  their  friends, 
of -all  models  in  the  repository,  and  workmen  and 
workshops  were  to  be  provided,  under  the  direction  of 
the  managers,  to  execute  such  orders  properly  and 
reasonably ;  the  copies  thus  made  of  all  machines, 
models,  and  plans  to  be  authenticated  by  the  seal  or 
stamp  of  the  Institution.  Workmen  employed  on 
these  orders  were  to  have  free  access  to  their  models, 
and,  with  the  approval  of  the  managers,  might  commit  to 
the  repository  any  specimen  article  of  their  own  manu- 
facture, with  their  address,  price,  &c. 

The  Institution  was   to   be  governed  by  nine  man- 


394  Life  of  Count  Ruinford. 

agers,  chosen  by  and  from  the  proprietors  by  sealed  bal- 
lots sent  in  previously  to  the  annual  meetings.  These 
managers  were  to  be  distributed  in  three  classes  of  three 
each,  for  terms  respectively  of  one,  two,  and  three  years, 
and  were  to  be  re-eligible  without  limitation.  Fourteen 
days  before  the  annual  meeting  the  managers  for  the 
time  being  were  to  send  to  each  proprietor  a  printed 
list,  authenticated,  of  such  proprietors  as  had  offered  or 
consented  to  be  candidates  for  the  vacancies  to  be  rilled 
in  the  management.  The  proprietor  was  to  designate 
by  marking  on  the  list  the  names  of  those  whom  he 
approved,  and  then  to  seal,  without  his  signature,  and 
send  the  slip  to  the  managers  under  an  additional  cover, 
which  he  was  to  sign  with  his  name;  this  additional  cover 
being  torn  off,  the  lists,  still  sealed,  were  to  be  mixed 
unopened  in  an  urn.  By  this  arrangement  only  pro- 
prietors could  send  in  ballots,  and  their  individual 
ballots  would  be  secret.  The  managers  were  to  serve 
without  pay  or  any  pecuniary  advantage,  and  were  to 
be  held  solemnly  pledged  to  the  faithful  discharge  of 
their  duties,  and  to  a  strict  adherence  to  the  principles 
of  the  Institution.  They  were  to  keep  the  property 
insured,  to  examine  all  accounts  and  disbursements,-  to 
keep  minutes  of  their  doings,  and  to  practise  a  rigid 
economy.  They  were  to  give  no  premiums  or  rewards 
of  any  kind  from  the  funds.  Ordinary  meetings  were  to 
be  held  weekly,  and  extraordinary  ones  when  necessary, 
three  of  the  managers  makmg-a,  quorum  for  business. 
The  presence  of  six  of  the  managers,  however,  should 
be  requisite  in  the  making  of  all  rules,  regulations,  and 
standing  orders,  which  should  have  force  after  having 
been  made  known  to  all  the  proprietors.  There  was  to 
be  also  a  committee  of  visitors,  in  number  the  same  as 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  395 

that  of  the  managers,  and  chosen  for  the  same  terms 
of  years,  who  should  annually  make  a  thorough  ex- 
amination of  every  part  of  the  Institution,  audit  its 
accounts,  criticise  its  efficiency,  and  send  in  a  printed 
report  to  the  proprietors.  No  one  could  be  eligible 
as  both  manager  and  visitor. 

The  managers  were  charged  to  procure  models  of  all 
inventions  and  improvements  in  mechanical  arts  made 
in  any  country.  These  were  to  be  the  permanent  prop- 
erty of  the  Institution,  whose  surplus  funds  were  to  be 
used  for  purchasing  them.  Special  efforts  and  inqui- 
ries were  to  be  made  to  obtain  from  over  the  British 
Empire  and  from  foreign  countries  all  such  new  and 
useful  improvements;  and  a  room  in  the  Institution, 
open  only  to  proprietors  and  subscribers,  should  be 
appropriated  for  the  record  of  all  such  information.  So 
deliberately  and  judiciously  were  all  the  arrangements 
and  details  for  the  organization  and  conduct  of  the 
Institution  devised  in  the  orderly  mind  of  Rumford, 
that  it  seemed  as  if  it  were  already  in  working  order 
while  still  it  existed  only  on  paper.  It  would  appear 
that  its  originator  was  guided  by  his  own  strong  con- 
viction that  a  well-devised  plan,  carefully  elaborated  in 
its  most  minute  principles,  would  avert  the  necessity  of 
that  preliminary  and  incidental  discussion  which  so 
often  checks  the  enthusiasm  needed  to  secure  the  first 
success  of  such  an  undertaking.  It  was  well  understood 
from  the  first  that  Rumford  was  the  leading  and  guid- 
ing spirit  of  the  Institution.  There  is  no  trace  of  any 
jealousy  or  disaffection,  or  even  of  any  personal  vari- 
ance, excited  towards  him  by  his  somewhat  authoritative 
leadership.  The  hearty  response  and  co-operation  of 
all  the  prominent  persons  whom  he  sought  to  engage, 


396  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

and  the  pecuniary  contributions  so  readily  gathered,  are 
evidences  of  the  confidence  reposed  in  him. 

After  the  first  printing  and  distribution  of  these 
cc  Proposals,"  and  before  the  Institution  had  received 
its  charter-title,  a  general  meeting  of  the  proprietors 
was  held  at  the  house  of  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  in  Soho 
Square,  on  March  7,  1799,  the  host  occupying  the 
chair.  It  was  then  found  that  fifty-eight  persons  had 
made  themselves  proprietors  by  the  contribution  of  fifty 
guineas  each.  The  list  contains  many  distinguished 
names  of  scientific  men,  gentlemen,  members  of  Parlia- 
ment and  of  the  nobility,  including  one  bishop,  some 
of  whom  were  more  than  simply  Maecenases. 

It  was  then  decided  at  once  to  choose  the  committee 
of  managers,  who  should  be  instructed  to  apply  to  his 
Majesty  for  a  charter  for  the  Institution,  to  lay  an  out- 
line of  its  plan  before  the  Right  Honorable  Mr.  Pitt 
and  his  Grace  the  Duke  of  Portland,  to  send  it  forth 
to  the  public,  and  to  publish  the  proceedings  in  the 
newspapers.  The  thanks  of  the  meeting  were  given  to 
the  presiding  officer.  The  following  information  is 
added  to  the  published  record :  — 

"  N.  B.  —  Count  Rumford's  original-  Proposals  for 
forming  the  Institution  may  be  had  of  Messrs.  Cadell 
and  Davies  in  the  Strand." 

At  the  first  meeting  of  the  managers  before  the  char- 
ter was  received,  held  at\£he_  house  of  Sir  Joseph  Banks, 
March  9,  1799,  "  ^n  a  motion \nade  by  Count  Rumford, 
it  was 

"  Resolved,  That  Sir  Joseph  Banks  be  requested  to 
take  the  chair,  and  that  he  do  continue  to  preside  at  all 
future  meetings  of  the  managers,  until  a  charter  shall  have 
been  obtained  from  his  Majesty  for  the  Institution." 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  397 

Other  resolutions  were  passed  for  effecting  a  pre- 
liminary organization.  Thomas  Bernard,  Esq.,  was 
chosen  Secretary.  The  Proposals  for  forming  the  In- 
stitution, as  published  by  Count  Rumford,  were  ap- 
proved and  adopted  by  the  managers,  "  subject,  how- 
ever, to  such  partial  modifications  as  shall  be  by  them 
found  to  be  necessary  or  useful."  Count  Rumford  and 
Mr.  Bernard  were  appointed  to  prepare  a  draught  of  a 
charter.*  Earls  Morton  and  Spencer,  Sir  Joseph 
Banks,  and  Mr.  Pelham,  were  -requested  to  lay  the 
Proposals  before  his  Majesty,  the  Royal  Family,  the 
Ministers,  the  great  officers  of  State,  the  members 
of  both  Houses  of  Parliament  and  of  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil, and  before  the  twelve  Judges.  Thanks  were  also 
voted  to  the  above-named  booksellers  for  their  gen- 
erosity in  offering  to  print  gratuitously  five  hundred 
copies  of  the  "Proposals." 

Count  Rumford,  with  dignified  modesty,  yet  with 
due  urgency,  attaches  a  fly-leaf  to  his  pamphlet,  with 
a  printed  form  for  subscriptions  and  donations. 

We  turn  now  to  another  contemporary  publication 
which  presents  "to  us  the  organized  completion  of  the 
establishment  in  the  conception  and  initiation  of  which. 
Count  Rumford  had  exercised  such  ingenuity  and  prac- 
tical wisdom,  and  in  whose  service  he  had  been  so 
zealously  engaged.  It  is  a  publication  in  quarto  form, 
of  ninety-two  pages,  bearing  the  following  title :  "  The 
Prospectus,  Charter,  Ordinances,  and  By-Laws  of  the 
Royal  Institution  of  Great  Britain.  Together  with 

*  Sir  John  Sinclair,  in  his  "  Correspondence,  &c.,  Vol.  I.  p.  28  (London,  1831)," 
says  of  the  Institution,  that  it  "was  placed  on  a  permanent  footing  by  an  act  which 
I  was  the  means  of  carrying  through  Parliament." 


398  Lifj  of  Count  Rumford. 

Lists  of  the  Proprietors  and  Subscribers ;  and  an  Ap- 
pendix. London.  Printed  for  the  Royal  Institution. 
1800.'*  It  bears  a  vignette  of  the  corporate  seal  of  the 
Institution,  which  is  a  flourishing  and  fruit-bearing  tree 
sprouting  out  of  a  mural  crown,  the  circle  being  sur- 
mounted by  the  royal  crown  of  Britain.  The  King 
appears  as  Patron,  the  officers  of  the  Institution  were 
appointed  by  him  at  its  formation,  the  Earl  of  Win- 
chilsea  and  Nottingham  being  President ;  the  Earls  of 
Morton  and  of  Egremont,  and  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  Vice- 
Presidents ;  the  Earls  of  Bessborough,  Egremont,  and 
of  Morton,  being  respectively  the  first-named  on  each 
of  the  three  classes  of  Managers,  —  on  the  first  of  which, 
to  serve  for  three  years,  is  Count  Rumford.  The 
Duke  of  Bridgewater,  Viscount  Palmerston,  and  Earl 
Spencer,  lead  each  of  the  three  classes  of  Visitors.  The 
whole  list  proves  with  what  a  power  of  patronage,  as 
well  as  with  what  popularity  and  enthusiasm,  the  enter- 
prise was  initiated.  Dr.  Thomas  Garnett  was  made 
Professor  of  Natural  Philosophy  and  Chemistry,  and 
Thomas  Bernard,  Esq.,  Treasurer.  A  Home  and  For- 
eign Secretary,  Legal  Council,  a  Solicitor,  and  a  Clerk, 
complete  the  list. 

Then  follows  the  Prospectus,  which  is  evidently 
from  the  pen  of  Count  Rumford,  as  it  exhibits  his 
direct  and  earnest  style  of  presenting  and  emphasizing, 
as  of  the  highest  practicaLinterest  for  civilized'  society, 
all  those  multiplied,  homely,  and  economical  objects 
of  inquiry  and  improvement  which  tend  to  promote 
the  welfare  and  increase  the  conveniences  of  human  life. 
The  word  INSTITUTION,  the  writer  says,  was  chosen 
after  mature  deliberation,  as  having  been  least  appro- 
priated by  previous  establishments,  and  as  best  adapted 


Life  of  Cotont  Rumford.  399 

to  the  comprehensive  designs  of  the  new  society.  He 
urges,  at  the  start,  the  forcible  truth,  that  it  has  been 
by  the  aid  of  machinery  in  procuring  the  necessaries, 
the  comforts,  and  the  elegances  of  life  that  all  the 
successive  improvements  have  been  made  in  the  con- 
dition of  man,  from  a  state  of  ignorance  and  barbarism 
up  to  that  of  the  highest  cultivation  and  refinement, 
and  that  the  stage  of  civilization  is  relatively  to  be 
judged  by  the  state  of  industry  and  mechanical  im- 
provements among  a  people.  In  illustration  of  this 
truth,  he  refers  to  the  experience  of  all  ages  and  places, 
and  to  the  differences  observable  in  various  nations, 
provinces,  towns,  and  even  villages,  as  flourishing  and 
populous  according  to  the  measure  of  the  activity  of 
their  industry.  Exertion  quickens  the  spirit  of  inven- 
tion, makes  science  flourish,  and  increases  the  moral 
and  physical  powers  of  man.  Thus  the  printing-press, 
the  art  of  navigation,  cc  the  astonishing  effects  of  gun- 
powder," and  the  steam-engine,  have  changed  the  course 
of  human  affairs,  and  wrought  influences  the  effects  of 
which  are  incalculable  for  the  future,  though  willing 
ignorance  would  have  derided  these  inventions  as  .im- 
possible, or  rejected  them  as  unnecessary.  In  proceed- 
ing to  point  out  the  causes  which  impede  progress,  and 
to  invite  the  public  to  engage  in  efforts  to  advance  it, 
he  enlarges  upon  some  of  the  views  already  presented  in 
the  Proposals.  He  refers  to  the  causes  of  the  slowness, 
indifference,  and  jealousy  under  which  improvements 
makt  their  way,  and  specifies  the  influence  of  habit, 
ignorance,  prejudice,  suspicion,  dislike  of  change,  and 
the  narrowing  effect  of  the  subdivision  of  work  into 
many  petty  occupations.  The  scorn  of  improvement, 
the  greed  for  wealth,  the  spirit  of  monopoly  and  of 


400  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

secret  intrigue,  are  exhibited  even  among  manufacturers. 
Between  workmen  and  merchants  comes  in  a  class  of 
men  who  have  a  great  and  essential  task  to  per- 
form. 

"These  men  are  Philosophers,  who  have  devoted 
themselves  to  the  labor  of  observing,  comparing,  an- 
alyzing, inventing.  The  movements  of  the  universe, 
the  relations  and  habitudes  of  men  and  of  things, 
causes  and  effects,  motives  and  consequences,  are  the 
powers  on  which  they  meditate  for  the  development 
of  truth,  by  those  remote  analogies  which  escape  the 
vulgar  mind.  It  is  the  business  of  these  Philosophers 
to  examine  every  operation  of  n'ature  or  of  art,  and  to 
establish  general  theories  for  the  direction  and  con- 
ducting of  future  processes.  Invention  seems  to  be 
peculiarly  the  province  of  the  man  of  science ;  his 
ardour  in  the  pursuit  of  truth  is  unremitted;  discovery 
is  his  harvest ;  utility  is  his  reward." 

Yet  even  these  philosophers  may  become  merely 
abstract  and  contemplative  dreamers,  detached  from 
the  ordinary  pursuits  of  life,  and  unwilling  to  descend 
from  the  sublimities  of  science  to  the  details  of  common 
occupations.  They  need  the  stimulus  of  interest  and 
of  the  capital  of  the  manufacturer,  who,  in  his  turn, 
needs  the  information  and  the  accurate  reasoning  of  the 
man  of  science.  There  are  three  direct  methods  for 
removing  these  difficulties.  One  of  these  is  to  give 
premiums  or  prizes  to  iWentors,  which  is  secured 
through  "The  Society  for/the  Encouragement  of  Arts, 
Manufactures,  and  Commerce/'  instituted  in  1753. 
The  second  method  is  by  granting  temporary  monopo- 
lies, which  is  provided  for  the  patent  and  other  laws. 
The  third  is  that  the  agency  of  which  is  secured  by 


Life  of  Count  Rum  ford.  401 

the  new  Institution,  for  diffusing  the  knowledge  and 
facilitating  the  introduction  of  useful  mechanical  inven- 
tions and  improvements. 

"In  the  execution  of  their  plan  the  Managers  have 
purchased  a  commodious  house  in  Albemarle  Street 
for  the  reception  and  exhibition  of  models  of  all  con- 
trivances and  improvements  worthy  of  public  notice. 
Instead  of  descriptions,  it  will  furnish  a  repository  of 
things  visible  and  tangible.  Manufacturers  and  con- 
sumers may  here  meet  for  mutual  advantage.  There 
will  also  be  a  library  of  all  the  best  treatises  devoted  to 
the  objects  of  the  Institution.  A  lecture-room  will  be 
provided,  thoroughly  fitted  with  laboratory  and  ap- 
paratus, for  philosophical  lectures  and  experiments  by 
men  of  the  first  eminence  in  science." 

Words  which  include  sciences  define  the  specific  sub- 
jects for  attention,  —  food,  clothing,  houses,  towns,  for- 
tresses, roads,  canals,  carriages,  ships,  tools,  weapons, 
&c.,  &c.  The  science  of  chemistry  will  be  brought  to 
bear  on  the  nature  of  soils ;  on  tillage  and  manures ;  on 
the  making  of  bread,  beer,  wine,  spirits,  starch,  sugar, 
butter,  and  cheese ;  and  in  the  processes  of  dyeing, 
calico-printing,  bleaching,  painting,  varnishing,  &c. ;  on 
the  smelting  of  ores,  the  compounding  of  metals,  mor- 
tar and  cements,  bricks,  pottery,  glass,  and  enamel. 
The  making  of  roads  and  of  vehicles,  canals  and  ves- 
sels and  engines  ;  the  improvement  of  rivers,  harbors, 
and  coasts,  and  of  the  art  of  war,  —  will  have  large  at- 
tention. Above  all,  "the  phenomena  of  light  and  heat 
—  those  great  powers  which  give  life  and  energy  to  the 
universe  —  powers  which,  by  the  wonderful  process  of 
combustion,  are  placed  under  the  command  of  human 
beings  — will  engage  a  profound  interest. 
26 


402  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Infinite  public  advantages  for  the  learned  and  the 
ignorant,  the  rich  and  the  poor,  may  be  made  sure  by 
the  diffusion  of  the  spirit  to  be  promoted  by  this  In- 
stitution. Good  taste,  good  morals,  rational  economy, 
industry,  and  ingenuity  will  be  secured  by  its  progress, 
"and  the  pursuits  of  all  the  various  classes  of  society 
will  then  tend  to  promote  the  public  prosperity."  Had 
Rumford  done  nothing  but  write  the  Prospectus,  that 
alone  would  prove  him  the  philosopher  and  philanthro- 
pist. 

The  charter  of  the  Institution  passed  the  royal 
seals  on  the  ijth  of  January,  1800.  The  twenty-fifth 
day  of  the  coming  March  was  appointed  for  organi- 
zation under  it.  Count  Rumford  is  named  among 
the  grantees,  and  its  provisions  conform  substantially 
to  his  own  well-wrought  plan  already  described.  The 
ordinances,  by-laws,  and  regulations  of  the  Institu- 
tion, which  are  likewise  for  the  most  part  adjusted  to 
that  plan,  and  provide  for  carrying  it  into  details  of 
efficiency  and  practical  benefit,  indicate  the  agency  of 
the  master-spirit  of  the  whole  enterprise.  Precautions 
are  taken  to  guard  against  the  influences  of  jealousy 
and  favoritism  in  its  membership  and  administration, 
and  to  hold  it  strictly  and  generously  to  its  prime  pur- 
poses of  benefiting  tli^public  by  research,  the  diffusion 
of  scientific  knowledge,  ^nd  the  service  of  the  most 
homely  and  economical  interests  of  humanity.  The 
managers  are  to  furnish  the  laboratory,  the  workshop, 
and  the  repository  of  the  establishment  in  the  most 
complete  manner,  and  to  provide  an  able  chemist  as  a 
teaching  and  demonstrating  professor,  and  also  to  en- 
gage other  professors  and  lecturers  in  experimental 
and  mechanical  philosophy.  No  political  subject  is 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  403 

to  be  even  mentioned,  and  no  themes  are  to  be  intro- 
duced but  such  as  are  connected  with  the  objects  of  the 
Institution.  The  payment  for  proprietorship  from 
May  i,  1800,  to  May  i,  1801,  was  fixed  at  sixty  guin- 
eas, and  ten  guineas  were  to  be  added  each  year  for  all 
newly  elected  proprietors,  up  to  the  ist  of  May,  1804, 
when  the  fee,  then  one  hundred  guineas,  should  be  the 
qualification  for  admission  till  further  order. 

Only  foreigners  were  to  be  eligible  as  honorary  mem- 
bers of  the  Institution,  and  they  only  when  distin- 
guished for  knowledge  in  science  or  in  some  useful 
art.  This  rule  was  subject  to  exceptions  for  members 
of  the  Royal  Family,  foreign  sovereign  princes,  and 
resident  ambassadors.  Ladies  were  admissible  as  life 
or  as  annual  subscribers.  Any  subscriber  might,  for 
cause,  be  ejected,  and  then  should  be  forever  after 
ineligible.  Occasional  scientific  and  experimental  lec- 
tures might  be  given  through  permission  of  the  mana- 
gers by  qualified  men  of  eminence.  Any  number  of 
committees  might  be  appointed  for  specific  scientific 
and  experimental  investigation. 

The  funds  were  to  be  disposed  of  as  provided  for  in 
the  plan.  No  presents,  or  occasional  or  special  re- 
wards or  gratuities,  were  allowed,  either  to  inventors 
and  discoverers  or  to  the  salaried  employes  of  the 
Institution. 

The  list  of  proprietors,  which  steadily  lengthened 
with  each  progressive  step  for  initiating  and  organ- 
izing the  Institution,  bears  "the  names  of  the  highest 
of  the  nobility,  of  many  of  the  prelates,  members  of 
Parliament,  scientific  men,  and  distinguished  common- 
ers,—  in  number,  two  hundred  and  eighty- one.  There 
were  two  hundred  and  sixty-seven  life  subscribers,  two 


404  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

of  whom  were  ladies  ;  and  four  hundred  and  thirteen 
annual  subscribers,  one  hundred  and  three  of  whom 
were  ladies ;  the  fee  being  raised  to  three  guineas. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  managers,  held  in  the  first 
month  of  the  charter  organization,  some  of  the  detailed 
subjects  of  inquiry  and  improvements  which  were  speci- 
fied in  Count  Rumford's  schedule  already  given,  and  a 
few  others,  were  assigned  to  committees  for  investiga- 
tion, beginning  with  the  processes  for  "making  bread," 
and  ending  with  those  "for  procuring  iron  from  its  ores/' 

At  the  same  meeting  Count  Rumford  was  requested 
to  take  measures  for,  and  to  superintend,  the  publication 
of  the  journals  of  the  Institution,  employing  such  assist- 
ance as  he  might  need.  No  private  advertisements 
were  to  be  published  with  the  journals,  and  a  printing- 
press  was  to  be  established  as  soon  as  possible  in  the 
Institution.  The  first  number  of  the  journals  appeared 
April  5,  1800.  They  were  to  be  published,  if  possi- 
ble, at  intervals  of  two  weeks,  and  were  to  be  adapted 
to  a  wide  circulation,  at  a  cost,  when  of  eight  pages,  of 
threepence,  and  when  of  sixteen  pages  sixpence,  a  part. 
The  preface  of  the  first  bound  volume,  completed  in 
1802,  informs  us  that  the  first  three  sheets  of  it  were 
published  under  "Count  Rumford's  direction.  They 
contain  reports  of  theflnefctings  of  the  managers  of  the 
Institution,  providing  fotr  committees  and  professors, 
assigning  subjects  for  scientific  investigation,  —  the  art 
of  making  bread  being  the  first  of  them,  —  an  account 
of  the  edifice  and  its  arrangements  then  in  progress,  and 
a  report  made  to  the  managers,  May  25,  1801,  by 
Rumford,  on  the  progress  and  hopeful  prospects  of  the 
Institution.  The  arrangements,  conveniences,  and  con- 
trivances described  in  this  report  all  indicate  the  in- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  405 

genious  painstaking  of  the  master-hand  which  was  at 
work  upon  them,  and  the  beginnings  of  a  rich  library 
of  scientific  journals  and  books  gathered  from  Europe 
and  America.  Count  Rumford  also  contributed  to  the 
pages  two  essays:  On  the  Means  of  Increasing  the  Heat 
obtained  in  the  Combustion  of  Fuel,  and  On  the  Use 
of  Steam  as  a  Vehicle  for  Conveying  Heat. 

Of  a  list  of  four  hundred  and  thirty-eight  donations 
of  books,  articles  of  furniture,  and  instruments  made 
in  the  first  year  to  the  Institution,  most  of  them  singly, 
by  individuals,  no  less  than  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
five  are  credited  to  Count  Rumford,  including  a  Lon- 
don edition,  in  two  volumes,  of  Franklin's  Life  and 
Works.  He  had,  at  this  time,  accumulated  a  very 
large  and  valuable  collection  of  apparatus  and  philo- 
sophical instruments,  many  of  them  the  work  of  his 
own  hands  as  well  as  the  contrivances  of  his  own  in- 
genuity, provided  in  pursuing  his  varied  experiments. 
These,  in  large  part,  the  Count  most  generously  gave 
to  the  Institution,  which  he  also  supplied — according  to 
the  general  rule  that  he  had  been  so  careful  to  introduce 
as  of  comprehensive  application  in  its  plan  —  with  well- 
constructed  models  of  all  his  own  inventions.  The 
repository  very  soon  became  a  centre  of  attraction  for 
visitors  as  well  as  for  residents  in  the  metropolis. 

A  contemporaneous  account  of  the  opening  of  the 
Institution  is  given  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  for 
1800,*  as  follows:  — 

"  Tuesday,  March  n.  —  A  society  under  the  title 
of 'The  Royal  Institution  of  Great  Britain/  and  under 
the  patronage  of  his  Majesty,  commenced  its  sittings 
for  the  first  time  this  day.  Its  professed  object  is  to 

*  Vol.  LXX.  Part  I.  p.  382. 


406  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

direct  the  public  attention  to  the  arts,  by  an  establish- 
ment for  diffusing  the  knowledge  and  facilitating  the 
general  introduction  of  useful  mechanical  inventions 
and  improvements." 

Count  Rumford  took  a  most  active  part  in  all  the 
meetings  of  the  managers  up  to  that  of  September  14, 
1799,  after  which  he  was  absent  until  the  jd  of  Febru- 
ary, 1800;  and  as  there  is  a  record  of  the  unfortunate 
illness  and  long  confinement  of  one  of  the  managers 
whose  zeal  had  been  so  conspicuous  in  the  formation 
and  success  of  the  Institution,  he  was  probably  ill 
during  that  interval. 

On  the  loth  of  March,  1800,  the  Count  was  residing 
in  the  house  of  the  Institution,  and  he  was  requested, 
as  long  as  he  did  so,  to  superintend  all  the  works,  the 
servants,  and  the  workmen.  In  August  he  was  at  Har- 
rowgate,  and  on  October  20  in  Scotland.  He  con- 
tinued in  the  house  probably  until  about  the  6th  of 
July,  1801,  as  it  was  then 

"ResafoeJ,  That  Count  Rumford  be  requested  to  con- 
tinue his  general  superintendence  of  the  works  going  on 
at  the  house  of  the  Institution,  agreeably  to  the  several 
resolutions  of  the  managers  in  that  respect,  in  the  same 
manner  as  if  he  hadNjontinued  to  reside  in  the  house." 

Count  Rumford  reported,  that,  at  the  recommenda- 
tion of  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  he  had  had  a  conversation  with 
Dr.  Young  respecting  his  engagement  as  Professor  of 
Natural  Philosophy  at  the  Royal  Institution  and  editor 
of  the  journals,  together  with  a  general  superintendence 
of  the  house.  And  "  it  appearing  from  the  report  of 
Count  Rumford  that  Dr.  Young  is  a  man  of  abilities 
equal  to  these  undertakings,  it  was 

"Resolved,  That  Count    Rumford   be   authorized  to 


Life  of  Count  Rnmford.  407 

engage    Dr.    Young    in    the    aforesaid    capacities,   at    a 
salary  of  <£joo  per  annum." 

The  Count's  visit  to  Harrowgate,  in  Yorkshire,  in 
July,  1800,  was  with  a  view  to  the  recovery  of  his 
health.  References  have  more  than -once  been  made 
in  the  previous  pages  to  the  prostration  and  suffering 
which  were  visited  upon  him  while  performing  his  most 
arduous  labors,  and,  as  he  seems  to  have  thought,  in 
consequence  of  the  exertions  and  self-sacrifices  which 
they  required  of  him.  There  are  hints  dropped  in 
some  contemporary  notices  of  him  which  imply  that 
he  practised  some  unwise  or  fanciful  experiments  on 
himself  in  the  matters  of  diet  and  exercise,  and  that  his 
originality  or  ingenuity  in  this  direction  may  have 
enfeebled  him.  There  are  no  apparent  grounds  for 
these  reflections  save  the  facts  that  he  was  frequently  ill, 
and  that  he  was  somewhat  notional  as  regards  his  food.v 
He  certainly  was  not  a  hypochondriac,  though  he  was 
probably  a  dyspeptic.  His  associate,  Dr.  Young,  de- 
scribes his  peculiarities  of  physical  habit,  and  the  regi- 
men to  which  he  had  recourse,  as  being  adopted  in 
obedience  to  his  medical  advisers,  rather  than  as  fancies 
of  his  own.  The  Count's  daughter  makes  many  refer- 
ences to  her  father's  frequent  weakness  and  illness,  and 
we  have  seen  that  he  himself  mentions  his  own  troubles 
of  this  sort  as  compelling  him  to  intermit  his  labors  in 
Munich  for  the  sake  of  rest  and  travel,  and  that  he  was 
not  able  to  resume  them  all  on  his  return. 

The  more,  therefore,  must  we  appreciate  his  never 
intermitted  industry,  and  constant  devotion  of  time  and 
thought  in  efforts  and  ingenious  schemes  for  the  good  of 
others.  If  many  of  these  labors  were  devised  and  car- 
ried out,  as  in  all  probability  they  were,  while  he  was 


408  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

himself  often  disabled  and  dispirited,  they  certainly  in- 
crease his  claims  upon  our  respect  and  gratitude.  He 
even  tried  to  make  his  own  experiences  as  an  invalid, 
and  the  methods  by  which  he  sought  health,  the  indirect 
occasions  for  furnishing  materials  for  his  Essays.  Thus 
in  this  visit  of  two  months  to  the  waters  at  Harrowgate 
he  contrived  by  his  experiments  on  himself  to  gather 
information  and  to  enlighten  others  on  the  salubrious 
effects  of  warm  bathing,  which  he  made  the  subject 
of  a  publication,  his  thirteenth  Essay.  He  began  by 
conforming  himself  to  the  advice  of  his  physician,  in 
accordance  with  the  professional  theory  at  the  time,  of 
taking  his  warm  bath  on  the  evening  of  each  third  day, 
and  going  immediately  to  his  bed,  which  had  been 
warmed  in  order  that  he  might  not  be  exposed  to  a 
chill.  But  he  found  that,  so  far  from  experiencing  any 
benefit  from  this  practice,  the  nights  after  he  had  taken 
his  baths  were  the  most  restless  and  feverish,  showing 
that  in  his  case,  at  least,  the  prescription  was  unsatis- 
factory. Acting  on  the  advice  of  a  fellow-lodger  at  the 
Ganby  Inn,  he  took  his  bath  at  midday,  two  hours 
before  dining,  employing  the  interval  in  his  usual  work. 
He  also  took  his  bath  on  alternate  days,  and  finally,  as 
he  was  stronger  artdjiad  a  better  appetite,  in  spite  of 
the  remonstrance  of  his  medical  adviser,  he  bathed  daily. 
He  satisfied  himself  that7  in  his  own  case,  contrary  to 
established  opinion,  a  warm  bath  was  not  relaxing  or 
enfeebling,  but  really  had  an  invigorating  effect,  while 
he  believed  that  a  cold  bath  gave  the  system  a  severe 
shock  which  only  those  of  a  rugged  constitution  could 
bear.  He  says  that  he  was  restored  to  better  health 
than  he  had  enjoyed  for  seven  or  eight  years,  having 
never  till  then  recovered  from  his  dangerous  illness  in 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  409 

Bavaria.  He  adds  some  directions  as  to  the  mode  in 
which  baths  should  be  constructed,  and  recommends 
them  further  as  a  means  of  harmless  and  useful  luxury. 
To  increase  the  pleasure  of  a  warm  bath,  he  suggests 
the  burning  of  sweet-scented  woods  and  aromatic  gums 
and  resins  in  small  chafing-dishes  in  the  bathing-rooms, 
by  which  the  air  will  be  perfumed  with  the  most  pleasant 
odors.  He  adds  :  — 

"  Those  who  are  disposed  to  smile  at  this  display  of  Eastern 
luxury  would  do  well  to  reflect  on  the  sums  they  expend  on 
what  they  consider  as  luxuries,  and  then  compare  the  real  and 
harmless  enjoyments  derived  from  them  with  the  rational  and 
innocent  pleasures  here  recommended.  I  would  ask  them  if  a 
statesman  or  a  soldier  going  from  the  refreshing  enjoyment  of  a 
bath,  such  as  I  have  described,  to  the  senate  or  to  the  field, 
would,  in  their  opinion,  be  less  likely  to  do  his  duty  than  a 
person  whose  head  is  filled  and  whose  faculties  are  deranged 
by  the  use  of  wine  ? 

"  Effeminacy  is  no  doubt  very  despicable,  especially  in  a 
person  who  aspires  to  the  character  and  virtues  of  a  man.  But 
I  see  no  cause  for  calling  anything  effeminate  which  has  no 
tendency  to  diminish  either  the  strength  of  the  body,  the 
dignity  of  the  sentiments,  or  the  energy  of  the  mind.  I  see  no 
good  reason  for  considering  those  grateful  aromatic  perfumes, 
which  in  all  ages  have  been  held  in  such  high  estimation,  as  a 
less  elegant  or  less  rational  luxury  than  smoking  tobacco  or 
stuffing  the  nose  with  snufF." 

He  pleads  for  the  reconstruction  in  England  of  the 
baths  which  the  old  Romans  once  established  there, 
and  is  enthusiastic  in  describing  and  commending  the 
vapor  baths  of  the  poor  Russian  peasants. 

Letters  of  the  Count  to  friends  in  America,  writ- 
ten at  .this  time,  give  evidence  alike  of  his  interest  in 
their  personal  service  and  of  his  desire  to  keep  them 


4io  Life  of  Count  Ritmfjrd. 

informed  about  himself.      The  following,    to    Colonel 
Baldwin,  is  in  answer  to  one  already  given. 

"  BROMPTON,  Ist  Febry.  1800. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  arrived  here  from  the  country  last 
evening,  and  as  I  hear  that  there  is  an  American  Ship  just  upon 
the  point  of  sailing  from  the  Downs  for  Boston,  I  shall,  if 
possible,  get  this  letter  put  on  board  her.  Your  letter  of  No- 
vember last  reached  me  about  ten  days  ago.  But  being  then 
at  a  considerable  distance  from  London,  I  could  do  nothing 
towards  executing  any  of  your  commissions.  I  have  this  day 
entered  on'  that  business  by  consulting  with  Mr.  Fraser  of 
New  Bond  St.,  Mathematical  Instrument  Maker  to  his  Maj- 
esty, and  a  very  old  acquaintance  of  mine,  respecting  the  best 
means  of  forwarding  your  views  regarding  your  son.  From 
Mr.  Fraser  I  learn  that  the  Instrument-making  business  is 
divided  into  two  distinct  branches  in  ^London,  namely,  working 
Instrument-Makers  and  Shopkeepers ;  and  that  though  some 
few  of  the  great  Shopkeepers — such,  for  instance,  as  Ramsden, 
Dolland,  Adams,  Fraser  &  Co.  —  have  workshops  in  their 
houses,  and  employ  some  workmen,  yet  that  by  far  the  greater 
part  of  the  articles  in  which  they  deal  are  made  by  manufac- 
turers who  live  in  their  own  private  houses  and  keep  no  open 
shops.  Working  Instrument-makers  take  apprentices  who  are 
always  bound  for  seven  years,  and  with  them  they  commonly 
receive  a  premium-df  abo^t  £50  or  <£6o  sterling. 

"The  great  dealers  in  Mathematical  Instruments  also  take 
apprentices,  but  they  have  seldom  opportunities  of  much  prac 
tice  in  making  instruments.  They  learn  to  know  the  construe 
tion  of  them  and  to  judge  of  their  merit  of  work,  and  of  the 
defects  and  perfection  of  the  instruments  in  which  they  deal ; 
and  they  likewise  learn  to  take  Instruments  to  pieces,  to  clean 
them,  and  to  examine  their  accuracy.  But  no  Instrument- 
Maker  or  dealer  in  Instruments  would,  without  a  very  large 
premium,  undertake  to  instruct  a  young  gentleman  in  the  course 
of  two  or  three  years,  and  make  him  perfect  in  both  branches 
of  the  trade. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  411 

c<  Mr.  Fraser  thinks  that  it  would  not  be  possible  to  get  your 
son  into  one  of  the  shops  of  London  for  a  term  of  from  two  to 
four  years  for  a  less  premium  than  from  <£6o  to  <£  100  sterling : 
your  son  to  be  boarded  in  the  house  free  of  cost  to  him  or  to 
you  during  that  period.  I  shall  make  further  inquiries,  and 
shall  take  an  early  opportunity  of  acquainting  you  with  the 
result  of  them.  As  I  have  not  a  moment  to  lose,  the  Ship 
being  on  the  point  of  sailing,  I  shall  add  nothing  more  to  this 
letter  than  merely  my  best  thanks  for  all  your  kindness  to 
my  Daughter,  whose  gratitude  is  equal  to  my  own. 
"  I  am  Yours  most  faithfully, 

"  RUMFORD. 

"  I  shall,  as  soon  as  possible,  set  about  executing  your  other 
commissions.  I  am  embarrassed  about  your  Thermometers,  as 
you  do  not  mention  the  extent  of  their  scales. 

"  My  Daughter  writes  me  that  you  are  very  kind  to  her,  and 
have  expressed  to  her  your  readiness  to  afford  her  assistance  in 
the  accomplishment  of  her  schemes.  I  beg  you  would  always 
give  her  your  advice  on  all  occasions,  and  I  shall  be  extremely 
grateful  to  you  for  all  the  assistance  you  may  afford  in  making 
the  situation  of  my  dear  Mother  as  comfortable  as  possible.  I 
long  very  much  indeed  to  see  my  beloved  Parent. 

[Superscription.] 

"If  the  Ship  Thomas  Russel  should  be  gone  from  the  Downs, 
where  she  now  is,  this  letter  is  to  be  returned  to  Count  Rum- 
ford  at  Brompton. 

"  The  Honb!e  COLONEL  BALDWIN,  Woburn. 

"  To  the  Care  of  Mr.  Cashing,  Merchant,  Boston,  State  of  Massa- 
chusetts. 

"By  the  American  Ship,  Thomas  Russel, —  Capt.  Jackson." 

The  following  letter  to  President  John  Adams  was 
designed  to  open  a  correspondence  between  the  Ameri- 
can Academy  and  the  Royal  Institution  :  — 


412  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

u  SIR,  —  The  Managers  of  the  Royal  Institution  of  Great 
Britain  have  directed  me  to  transmit  to  the  American  Academy 
of  Arts  and  Sciences  the  enclosed  Prospectus.  I  have  there- 
fore the  honour  to  forward  the  same  to  your  Excellency,  and 
to  request  that  you  would  lay  it,  or  cause  it  to  be  laid,  before 
that  learned  and  respectable  body. 

"  I  have  likewise  the  honour,  in  conformity  to  the  Instruc- 
tions I  have  received,  to  request  that  the  American  Academy 
of  Arts  and  Sciences  may  be  assured  of  the  sincere  desire  of  the 
Managers  of  the  Royal  Institution  of  Great  Britain  to  cultivate 
a  friendly  Correspondence  with  them,  and  to  co-operate  with 
them  in  all  things  that  may  contribute  to  the  advancement  of 
Science  and  to  the  general  Diffusion  of  the  Knowledge  of  all 
such  new  and  useful  Discoveries  and  mechanical  Improvements 
as  may  tend  to  increase  the  enjoyments  and  promote  the  Indus- 
try, Happiness,  and  Prosperity  of  Mankind. 

"  I  have  the  honour  to  be  with  great  Respect, 

"  Your  Excellency's  most  Obedient  and  most  Humble  Ser- 
vant, 

"RUMFORD. 

"  ROYAL  INSTITUTION,  Albemarle  St.,  London,  i?  June,  1800. 

"His  Excellency  JOHN  ADAMS,  President  of  the  United  States 
and  President  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences." 

With  asimifar  ihteiit  the  Count  addressed  the  follow- 
ing letter  to  the  President  of  Harvard  College :  — 

"  ROYAL  INSTITUTION,  Albemarle  St.,  London,  Is*  June,  1800. 

"  SIR,  —  By  direction  of  the  Managers  of  the  Royal  Institu- 
tion of  Great  Britain,  I  have  the  honour  to  transmit  to  the 
President  of  Harvard  University  the  inclosed  publication,  in 
which  an  account  is  given  of  an  establishment  lately  formed  in 
this  metropolis  for  promoting  useful  knowledge. 

"  I  have  likewise  the  honour,  in  conformity  to  the  instruc- 
tions I  have  received,  to  request  that  the  heads  of  the  University 
may  be  assured  of  the  sincere  desire  of  the  Managers  of  the 
Royal  Institution  of  Great  Britain  to  cultivate  a  friendly  corre- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  413 

spondence  with  them,  and  to  co-operate  with  them  in  all  things 
that  may  contribute  to  the  advancement  of  Science,  and  to  the 
general  Diffusion  of  the  Knowledge  of  all  such  new  and  useful 
Discoveries  and  mechanical  Improvements  as  may  tend  to  in- 
crease the  enjoyments  and  promote  the  Industry,  Happiness, 
and  Prosperity  of  Mankind. 

u  I  have  the  honour  to  be,  with  much  respect,  Sir, 
"  Your  most  obedient  humble  servant, 

"RUMFORD. 
"To  the  REV.  DR.  WILLARD,  President  of 

Harvard  University,  Massachusetts."* 

Domestic  and  scientific  concerns  are  happily  com- 
bined in  the  following  letter  to  Colonel  Baldwin,  writ- 
ten from  the  Count's  lodgings  in  the  Institution  in 
Albemarle  Street:  — 

"  ROYAL  INSTITUTION,  9l.h  June,  1800. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  cannot  neglect  so  good  an  opportunity 
of  writing  to  you  as  the  return  of  Mr.  Higginson  to  Amer- 
ica now  offers.  And  I  must  begin  my  letter  with  a  subject 
which  is  ever  uppermost  in  my  mind.  My  Daughter  and  my 
dear  Mother  will  probably  be  in  your  neighbourhood  when  this 
letter  reaches  you.  I  most  earnestly  recommend  them  both  to 
your  kind  attentions.  I  have  one  wish,  and  one  only,  respect- 
ing them,  which  is,  that  they  may  be  as  happy  as  possible.  As 
I  am  at  so  great  a  distance  from  them,  I  am  but  ill  qualified 
to  judge  of  their  wants  and  their  wishes.  Pray  assist  them 
in  every  way  in  which  your  friendly  assistance  can  be  of  use 
to  them  or  make  them  comfortable  and  contented.  I  once 
imagined  that  my  Mother  might  perhaps  be  disposed  to  prefer 
Woburn  to  every  other  situation  for  the  place  of  her  residence, 
and  I  have  long  wished  to  see  her  and  my  Daughter  comforta- 
bly settled  under  the  same  roof.  What  can  be  done  to  unite 
them  cordially  in  the  same  scheme  and  mode  of  life  ? 

"  If  this  can  be  done,  I  should  prefer  it  to  any  other  plan. 

*  Memories  of  Youth  and  Manhood.      By  Sydney  Willard.     Vol.  I.  p.  159. 


414  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

But  if  it  cannot  well  be  arranged  to  the  entire  satisfaction  and 
comfort  of  both,  I  shall  always  be  perfectly  satisfied  if  I  know 
that  they  are  both  pleased  and  contented.  I  always  was  of 
opinion  that  people  should  be  left  to  act  freely  and  make  them- 
selves comfortable  and  happy  in  their  own  way.  It  is  very 
possible  that  my  Mother  may  have  good  reasons  for  preferring 
a  place  of  residence  and  mode  of  life  very  different  from  that 
which  I,  at  this  great  distance,  might  think  would  please  her 
most.  I  wish  I  knew  what  she  wishes.  I  should  then  have  no 
doubts  how  to  act  and  what  to  propose.  Perhaps  my  Daugh- 
ter may  marry  (which  she  has  my  leave  to  do  whenever  she 
pleases,  and  with  whom  she  pleases).  This  may  greatly  alter 
her  relative  situation  with  me  and  with  my  Mother.  She  may 
perhaps  wish  at  some  future  period  to  make  me  another  visit  in 
Europe,  and  even  in  this  scheme  I  shall  not  oppose  her  inclina- 
tions, if  her  heart  should  be  set  on  the  gratification  of  them.  I 
do  not  mean  to  be  an  indulgent  father  in  theory  only. 

"  Pray  let  me  know  what  you  think  on  these  subjects,  and 
tell  me  how  I  must  act  to  make  two  Persons. who  are  very  dear 
to  me  as  happy  as  possible. 

"I  ought  to  take  shame  to  myself  for  giving  you  so  much 
trouble,  when  you  may  think  I  have  paid  little  attention  to  your 
requests.  The.-enclosed  account  of  Mr.  Eraser  will  acquaint 
you  witnllTerparticu]ars  of  those  articles  which  you  will  now 
receive  by  Mr.  Higginson. 

"  The  Lathe,  Mandrel,  &c.,  which  are  ordered  from  the  very 
best  workman  in  that  line  in  Great  Britain,  will  be  forwarded 
when  finished,  as  will  be  also  the  Lucernal  Glasses^  which  are 
never  found  ready  made.  If  you  wish  to  have  two  equal  mer- 
curial Thermometers  of  the  greatest  possible  Range  of  Scale, 
viz.  from  freezing  to  boiling  mercury,  or  from  40°  below 
Nothing  to  about  600°  above  Nothing  of  Fahrenheit's  Scale, 
I  will  order  them  for  you.  They  will  cost  about  2^  Guineas 
each.  Give  me  your  orders. 

"  My  Daughter  will  acquaint  you  with  the  brilliant  Success 
of  our  new  Institution.  The  Subscriptions  have  amounted  this 
year  to  above  £  24,000  Sterling.  And  as  little  of  the  Institu- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  415 

tion  has  yet  been  seen  except  upon  paper,  and  in  the  form  of  Pro- 
posals and  descriptions  of  what  it  is  intended  to  establish,  I 
consider  this  unexampled  support  as  a  flattering  testimony  of 
the  public  opinion  entertained  of  the  talents  and  probity  of  the 
founders  of  the  Institution.  You  will  naturally  perceive  how 
strongly  these  proofs  of  the  public  esteem  and  regar.d  must  bind 
me  to  the  Institution,  and  render  it  my  duty  to  watch  over 
it,  and  do  everything  in  my  power  to  make  it  perfect  and  dura- 
ble. I  wish  you  would  come  and  see  it  this  autumn.  I  can 
offer  you  a  very  comfortable  house  while  you  stay  in  England, 
and  if  you  should  want  a  travelling  companion,  I  believe  you 
could  find  one  without  going  very  far  to  look  after  him.  It  is 
highly  probable  that  I  should  be  able  to  return  with,  you  to 
America  in  the  month  of  March,  or  I  would  wait  till  May  or 
June,  if  a  wish  to  examine  the  Canals  in  England  should  render 
you  desirous  of  staying  a  few  months  longer  in  this  country. 
"  I  am  ever,  my  Dear  Sir, 

"  Yours,  Most  Affectionately, 

"  RUMFORD. 

"  Count  Rumrord,  for  Colonel  Baldwin, 

"Bought  of  WM  FRASER,  Mathematical  Instrument  Maker  to  his 
Majesty  and  Optician  to  His  Royal  Highness  the  Prince  of  Wales. 
No.  3  Bond  Street. 

£.     s       d. 

A  Portable  Barometer,  with  Rack  work  and  a  packing  case   313  6 

A  Pair  of  8  inch  Magnetic  Bars  in  a  Mahn.y  Box                    I      I  o 

A  Thermometer  on  a  Metal  Scale,  in  a  Case                          I      5  ^o 

A  do.  on  an  Ivory  Scale,  in  a  Glass  tube  and  a  case                I      I  o 

2  Two  Pole  Tapes  in  Boxes                                                      °   15  ° 

A  Pint  &  £  a  Gill  of  Pure  Brass  varnish,  brushes,  &c.           oio  6 

A  ream  of  the  best  Lawn  Paper                                                  012  6 

J  oz.  of  Silver  wire  4/9,  and  4  oz.  of  Plated  do.  5/6             o   10  3 

£9     8  9 

«  SIR,  —  Not  being  certain  as  to  what  degree  of  heat  the  Ther- 
mometers were  to  be  used  in,  I  have  only  sent  two  Boiling- 
water  Thermometers.  If  they  are  required  to  endure  a  greater 


416  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

heat  they  must  be  made  on  purpose.  The  Collar  and  man- 
drel, &c  is  in  hand,  but  there  being  but  one  workman  in 
London  whose  Lathes  I  could  recommend,  and  his  being  so 
much  employed,  renders  it  impossible  to  get  it  finished  in  less 
than  three  weeks  or  a  month.  The  set  of  Glasses  for  the 
Lucernal  Microscope  must  also  be  made  on  purpose,  which  will 
take  nearly  two  weeks.  The  collar  and  mandrel,  with  screw- 
tools  complete,  will  come  to  £5.  15.  o,  and  the  set  of  Glasses 
for  a  Lucernal  Microscope  will  be  £3.  3.  o. 

"  P.  S.  —  It  will  be  of  no  use  to  send  the  Speculums  of  the 
Reflecting  Telescope  without  the  brass  work,  as  the  goodness 
of  the  Telescope  principally  depends  upon  their  being  properly 
adjusted. 

"The  cleaning  of  the  Speculum  would  cost  about  25/f. 

"W*  FRASER. 

"  In  Varnishing  any  Brass- Work,  the  Brass  is  first  to  be 
warmed  just  sufficient  to  evaporate  the  Spirits  and  leave  the 
Wax  or  Gum  on  the  Brass.  It  is  to  be  put  on  as  lightly  as 
possible,  so  as  to  be  all  covered. 

.  ("  Received  Aug*.  6,  1 800.") 

It  would  have  been  a  most  gratifying  and  delightful 
incident4n^the^rfeof  Count  Rumford,  if,  in  fulfilment 
of  the  terms  of  his  own  cordial  invitation,  his  friend 
Colonel  Baldwin  had  had  leisure  at  the  time  to  indulge 
his  own  earnest  wishes  by  joining  the  Count  in  Lon- 
don, to  revive  the  pleasant  memories  of  their  youth, 
and  to  enjoy  the  privilege  of  such  a  companionship 
for  introduction  to  eminent  scientific  men  and  for 
travel  in  England  or  on  the  Continent.  But  Colonel 
Baldwin  was,  in  a  more  limited  sphere,  serving  his  na- 
tive State  as  faithfully  as  was  the  Count  in  his  larger 
opportunities  advancing  the  interests  of  practical  science 
for  the  civilized  world.  In  the  mean  while  Colonel 
Baldwin  was  faithful  to  the  highest  obligations  of  re- 


Life  of  Count  Ritmford.  417 

spect  and  admiration  for  his  friend  by  preparing  him- 
self for  writing  and  publishing  during  the  Count's  life- 
time the  best  accounts  of  him  and  of  his  great  undertak- 
ings which  had  appeared  in  print.  They  are  found  in 
that  series  of  articles  in  two  volumes  -of  the  "  Literary 
Miscellany,"  published  in  Cambridge,  which  have  been 
already  referred  to  and  quoted. 

Dr.  John  Davy,  in  his  memoirs  of  the  life  of  his 
brother,  Sir  Humphry,  gives  a  sketch  of  his  connec- 
tion with  the  Royal  Institution  as  assistant  lecturer  on 
chemistry  and  director  of  the  laboratory,  —  this  being  a 
temporary  arrangement  till  he  should  be  qualified  for 
the  professorship  of  chemistry.  While  recognizing  very 
fully  and  adequately  the  hopeful  and  promising  inaugu- 
ration of  the  new  Institution,  and  the  signal  services 
which  have  been  performed  through  it,  this  biographer 
hardly  does  justice  to  the  claims  of  Count  Rumford  as 
its  master-spirit,  or  to  his  agency  in  bringing  Sir  Hum- 
phry upon  the  scene  where  he  won  his  first  eminent 
distinctions.  Dr.  Davy  very  justly  says  that  the  In- 
stitution was  a  new  experiment,  engaging  the  zeal  and 
active  co-operation  of  people  of  rank  and  fortune,  and 
opening  a  most  auspicious  era  for  general  science,  espe- 
cially for  chemistry,  in  the  expansion  and  extension  of 
its  relations.  The  Continent  was  then  closed  by  war. 
A  large  number  of  influential  persons  in  society  were 
induced  to  enlist  in  the  high  and  profitable  pursuits 
which  the  Institution  opened  to  them,  and  they  found 
alike  amusement,  gratification,  and  practical  profit  by 
attendance  upon  its  lectures  and  experiments  and  by 
visiting  its  repository  of  models  and  inventions.  Dr. 
Davy  gives  an  excellent  description  of  the  laboratory 
of  the  Institution,  which  was  for  that  time  very  com- 
27 


418  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

pletely  and  even  lavishly  furnished.  The  founder  had 
from  the  first  resolved  that  all  the  apparatus  of  science 
which  skill  and  money  could  then  secure  should  be  pro- 
vided for  lecturers  and  experimenters. 

A  more  full  recognition  of  Count  Rumford.'s  agency 
in  securing  the  services  of  Davy  than  that  which  is  given 
in  the  memoir  by  his  brother  may  be  found  in  the 
earlier  biography  of  him  by  Dr.  John  Ayrton  Paris.*" 
Dr.  Paris  quotes  a  letter  addressed  to  himself  (p.  76) 
by  Mr.  J.  R.  Underwood,  one  of  Rumford's  most 
intimate  friends  and  associates  in  the  Institution,  to  the 
effect  that  he  and  Mr.  James  Thompson  had  made 
known  to  the  Count  Davy's  talents  and  eminent  quali- 
ties for  a  lecturer.  Davy  had  been  pursuing  some  in- 
vestigations on  heat,  probably  instigated  and  guided  by 
Rumford's  publication  of  his  own  experiments.  There 
will  be  occasion  by  and  by  to  make  a  passing  refer- 
ence to  an  absurd  allegation  that  Davy  had  anticipated 
the  discoveries  of  Rumford  on  his  great  subject.  The 
attention  of  the  Count  having  thus  been  called  to  this 
promising^^u^h^Rvm^orci  at  once  wrote  to  Davy,  who 
came,  at  his  summons,  to  London,  and  after  several 
interviews  with  him  accepted,  at  Rumford's  instance, 
the  invitation  of  the  managers  to  become  Director  of 
the  laboratory  and  Assistant  Professor  of  Chemistry, 
February  16,  1801.  Though  Davy  in  a  letter  re- 
ports that  the  Count  was  most  liberal  and  polite  in  be- 
havior towards  him,  it  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  Count 
at  first  received  a  highly  unfavorable  impression  from 
Davy's  personal  appearance  (pp.  79,  80).  This  the 
Count  expressed  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Underwood,  nor 
would  he  allow  Davy  to  lecture  in  the  theatre  of  the 

*  London,  1831. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  419 

Institution  till  he  had  himself  had  trial  of  him  in  the 
smaller  room.  His  first  lecture,  however,  removed  the 
misgiving,  and  Rumford  heartily  said,  "  Let  him  com- 
mand any  arrangements  which  the  Institution  can  af- 
ford." Davy  was  uncouth  in  appearance  and  address, 
and  he  had  to  bear  many  mortifications  in  his  first 
mingling  with  society  in  London.  Rumford  was  at 
one  of  Davy's  lectures  as  late  as  May  25,  1802,  hav- 
ing in  the  autumn  of  the  previous  year  been  absent  in 
Paris.  Perhaps  it  was  well  that  these  two  eminent  men 
of  science,  with  their  marked  peculiarities  of  character 
and  temper,  were  not  long  kept  in  intimate  intercourse. 
They  would  hardly  have  been  personal  friends,  as  they 
shared  some  of  the  same  weaknesses  of  sensitiveness  and 
irritability. 

I  am  indebted  to  Dr.  H.  Bence  Jones,  the  Secretary 
of  the  Royal  Institution,  and  the  author  of  the  admira- 
ble memoir  of  Faraday,  for  his  kindness  in  copying  and 
transmitting  to  me  the  following  letter  of  Count  Rum- 
ford  to  Davy  :  — 

"  ROYAL  INSTITUTION,  i6l.h  Feb.  1801. 

"DEAR  SIR, —  In  consequence  of  the  conversations  I  have 
had  with  you  respecting  your  engaging  in  the  service  of  the 
Royal  Institution  of  Great  Britain,  I  this  day  laid  the  matter 
before  the  Managers  of  the  Institution,  at  their  Meeting  : 
(Present,  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  Earl  of  Morton,  Count  Rum- 
ford,  and  Richard  Clark,  Esq.,)  and  I  have  the  pleasure  to 
acquaint  you  that  th-e  Proposal  I  made  to  them  was  approved,  and 
the  following  Resolution  unanimously  taken  by  them  :  '  Re- 
solved, That  Mr.  Humphry  Davy  be  engaged  in  the  service  of 
the  Royal  Institution  in  the  capacity  of  Assistant  Lecturer  in 
Chemistry,  Director  of  the  Chemical  Laboratory,  and  assistant 
Editor  of  the  Journals  of  the  Institution  ;  and  that  he  be  al- 
lowed to  occupy  a  room  in  the  house,  and  be  furnished  with 


420  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

coals  and  candles,  and  that  he  be  paid  a  salary  of  one  hundred 
guineas  per  annum? 

"  On  this  occasion  I  did  not  neglect  to  give  an  account  to 
the  Managers  of  the  whole  of  what  passed  between  us  respect- 
ing the  situation  it  was  intended  you  should  fill  in  the  Institu- 
tion on  your  engaging  in  its  service,  and  the  prospects  that 
could  with  propriety  be  held  out  to  you  of  future  advantages; 
and  the  Managers  agreed  with  me  in  thinking  that  as  you  had 
expressed  your  willingness  to  devote  yourself  entirely  and  per- 
manently to  the  Institution,  it  would  be  right  and  proper  to  hold 
out  to  you  the  prospect  of  becoming  in  the  course  of  two  or 
three  years  Professor  of  Chemistry  in  the  Institution,  with  a 
Salary  of  three  hundred  pounds  per  annum,  provided  that  within 
that  period  you  shall  have  given  proofs  of  your  fitness  to  hold 
that  distinguished  situation.  Although  you  must  ever  consider 
the  duties  of  the  office  you  may  hold  under  the  Institution  as 
the  primary  objects  of  your  care  and  attention,  yet  the  Man- 
agers are  far  from  being  desirous  that  you  should  relinquish 
those  private  philosophical  investigations  in  which  you  have 
hitherto  been  engaged,  and  by  which  you  have  so  honorably 
distinguished  yourself  and  attracted  their  attention.  It  will 
afford  them  the  sincerest  pleasure  to  encourage  and  assist  you 
in  these  laudable  pursuits,  and  give  you  every  facility  which  the 


Philosophical^apparatus^  at  the  Institution  can  afford  to  make 
new  and  interesting  experiments. 

"  You  will  naturally  consider  the  Journals  of  the  Institution 
as  the  most  proper  vehicle  for  communicating  to  the  public, 
from  time  to  time,  short  accounts  of  the  progress  you  may 
make  in  your  investigations  ;  this  will,  however,  by  no  means 
be  considered  as  precluding  you  in  any  degree  from  presenting 
to  the  Royal  Society  of  London,  or  any  other  learned  body, 
Philosophical  papers,  or  Memoirs  on  such  scientific  subjects  as 
may  engage  your  attention,  or  from  publishing  in  any  other 
manner  the  results  of  your  researches. 

"  As  you  are  fully  informed  with  respect  to  the  nature  and 
objects  of  the  Royal  Institution,  and  are  acquainted  with  the 
respectable  characters  of  those  distinguished  persons  with  whom 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  421 

I  have  the  honour  to  act  in  the  management  of  its  concerns, 
you  cannot,  I  think,  entertain  the  smallest  doubt  of  their  con- 
stant protection,  and  of  their  readiness  on  all  occasions  to  do 
full  justice  to  the  zeal  and  abilities  you  may  display  in  the 
situation  in  which  they  have  placed  you. 

"  It  is  with  much  esteem  and  a  sincere  desire  that  the  talents 
which  at  so  early  a  period  of  life  you  discovered  may  be  culti- 
vated with  care  and  always  employed  with  success,  that  I  am, 
Dear  Sir, 

"  Your  Most  Obedient  Servant, 

"  RUMFORD." 

I  am  also  indebted  to  Dr.  Jones  for  his  kindness 
in  copying  for  me  the  following  extracts  from  the  man- 
agers' minutes  :  — 

"March  1 6,  1 80 1.  —  Count  Rumford  reported  that  Mr. 
Davy  arrived  at  the  Institution  on  Wednesday,  the  nth  of 
March,  1801,  and  took  possession  of  his  situation. 

"  In  consequence  of  the  verbal  directions  which  Count  Rum- 
ford  had  received  from  the  managers  to  prepare  a  room  in  the 
house  of  the  Institution  for  Mr.  Davy,  namely,  that  adjoining 
the  room  now  occupied  by  Dr.  Garnett,  and  to  refund  to  the 
Doctor  the  expenses  he  had  been  at  in  furnishing  the  said  room, 
the  Count  reported  that  the  committee  of  expenditure  had 
paid  to  Dr.  Garnett  £  20  2  3  for  a  new  Brussels  carpet,  and 
£17  6  o  for  twelve  chairs,  making  in  the  whole  the  sum  of 
£37  8  3,  and  that  the  said  carpet  and  chairs  have  been  em- 
ployed in  furnishing  the  room  occupied  by  the  managers. 

"  Count  Rumford  reported  further  that  he  had  purchased  a 
cheaper  second-hand  carpet  for  Mr.  Davy's  room,  together 
with  such  other  articles  as  appeared  to  him  necessary  to  render 
the  room  habitable,  and  among  the  rest  a  new  sofa-bed,  which, 
in  order  that  it  may  serve  as  a  model  for  imitation,  has  been 
made  complete  in  all  its  parts." 

Faraday  also  was  largely  indebted  to  the  opportuni- 
ties and  facilities  furnished  by  the  Royal  Institution 


422  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

in  fostering  his  early  ardor  for  science.  During  his 
apprenticeship  as  a  newspaper-boy  and  a  bookbinder, 
and  just  as  he  was  reaching  manhood,  a  customer  of  his 
master,  who  was  a  member  of  the  Institution,  gave  him 
tickets  to  four  of  the  lectures  which  Davy  delivered 
there  early  in  1812.  Faraday  wrote  out  these  lectures 
from  notes  which  he  made  of  them,  illustrated  them  by 
drawings  of  his  own,  and  sent  his  manuscript  to  Davy 
with  a  letter  expressing  his  desire  to  escape  from  trade 
and  engage  in  scientific  pursuits.  Davy  promptly  re- 
sponded to  hrs  confidence,  and  though  he  detected  signs 
of  fitness  for  such  pursuits  in  his  correspondent  advised 
him  not  to  abandon  his  trade,  as  science  was  a  poor 
paymaster,  while  at  the  same  time  he  promised  the 
youth  his  patronage,  and  offered  to  secure  to  him  the 
bookbinding  of  the  Institution  and  of  his  friends. 
Davy  soon  after  invited  Faraday  to  an  interview,  at 
which  he  offered  him  the  place  of  assistant  in  the  labora- 
tory on  a  salary  of  twenty-five  shillings  a  week,  with 
two  attic  rooms.  This  was  in  the  early  part  of  March, 
1813.  Faraday  a^once  occupied  his  lodgings  in  the 
building,  andr^ngaged  with  devoted  industry  and  zeal  in 
chemical  manipulation  in  the  laboratory.  He  lectured 
before  the  Institution  for  the  long  period  of  thirty- 
eight  years,  and  having,  in  1825,  been  made  its  Di- 
rector, is  thought  by  his  biographer  to  have  averted  its 
decline  or  secured  its  continued  existence.  It  furnished 
him  a  home  and  a  sphere  for  eminent  service  during 
more  than  half  a  century.*  I  am  not  aware  that  Fara- 
day ever  met  with  Count  Rumford,  but  think  it  not  at 
all  unlikely  that  he  did  so  while  spending  three  months 

*  Dr.   H.   Bence  Jones,  in  his  "Life  and  Letters  of  Faraday"  (London,  1870), 
gives  much  interesting  information  about  the  Institution.  ' 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  423 

in  Paris  in  the  autumn  and  winter  of  1813  as  the  com- 
panion of  Davy. 

Considering  that  there  was  then  in  London  no  other 
well-furnished  laboratory,  and  indeed  no  other  estab- 
lishment with  an  endowment  and  an  organization  for 
securing  the  best  opportunities  for  experimental  re- 
search with  the  facilities  and  the  patronage  of  an  appre- 
ciative audience  in  attendance  upon  lectures,  we  may 
well  claim  for  the  Royal  Institution  the  honor  of 
adopting  Faraday  —  perhaps  the  most  distinguished 
man  in  the  whole  of  his  own  field  which  the  world  has 
produced  —  as  its  most  accomplished  alumnus.  In 
those  qualities  of  character  which  made  him  so  lov- 
able, for  magnanimity,  simplicity,  ingenuousness,  and 
modesty,  as  well  as  for  his  single-hearted  devotion  to 
science,  he  stands  without  a  rival  at  the  head  of  the  roll 
of  fame.  The  foibles  of  vanity,  self-assertion,  and  arro- 
gance which  we  have  to  lament  on  his  own  account 
in  Davy  show  no  traces  of  their  presence  or  influence 
in  Faraday.  It  would  have  been  pleasant  to  trace,  if 
facts  would  have  enabled  us  to  do  so,  any  tokens  of  an 
acquaintance,  which  we  may  be  sure  would  have  been 
a  friendship,  between  him  and  Rumford ;  for  we  may 
say  of  the  latter,  with  full  confidence,  that  he  was 
free  from  jealousy,  and  that,  whatever  foibles  he  may 
have  exhibited,  he  would  have  found  in  Faraday  one 
whom  he  would  have  most  cordially  appreciated  and 
admired,  and  one  whom  he  would  have  delighted  to 
extol. 

M.  Pictet  would  appear  to  have  been  the  most  ad- 
miring, constant,  and  enthusiastic  among  the  many 
devoted  friends  of  Count  Rumford.  He  was  himself 
highly  cultivated  and  passionately  fond  of  scientific  pur- 


424  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

suits,  with  strong  religious  feelings,  and  of  an  ardent 
temperament.  In  his  first  letter  to  his  fellow-editors, 
written  in  London,  June  21,  1801,*  he  says  that  the 
principal  motive  which  induced  him,  in  such  distract- 
ing times  of  war,  to  undertake  his  tour,  was  his  admi- 
ration of  Count  Rumford  and  his  desire  to  visit  the 
land  where  he  dwelt.  The  Count  had  long  before  prof- 
fered him  his  hospitalities  at  his  own  home  at  Bromp- 
ton,  though  until  his  arrival  at  the  house  they  had 
never  seen  each  other.  The  Count  insisted  that  a 
friend  of  Pictet's,  who  had  come  with  him  from  Paris, 
though  a  perfect  stranger,  should  likewise  be  his  guest. 
The  host  took  them  both,  on  the  day  of  their  arrival,  to 
the  Royal  Institution.  This  was  the  admiration  of 
Pictet,  who  proceeds  to  translate  for  his  Bibliotfoque 
the  report  of  the  Institution  published  in  the  second 
number  of  its  journal.  In  one  of  his  notes  to  this 
report  the  correspondent  describes  the  lecture-rooms  or 
amphitheatres  as  disposed  and  contrived  by  the  Count 
with  wonderful  adaptation  to  their  purposes.  In  an- 
other note^thex^^enchman  proves  how  soon  he  had 
learned  in  England  jthe  cant  meaning  of  the  word  job, 
—  which,  however,  he  spells  with  two  b's,  and  does  not 
attempt  to  turn  into  a  French  equivalent.  He  says  the 
Count  was  so  determined  to  exclude  all  speculation  and 
all  chance  for  private  individual  thrift  or  gain  from  the 
Institution,  that  even  in  the  saloon,  or  restaurant,  viands, 
tea,  and  coffee  were  furnished  at  prime  cost  to  all 
attending  the  establishment  who  needed  refreshment,  — 
precluding  "what  is  known  so  well  in  England  sous  le 
nom  de  jobb" 

Delighted    with    his    inspection    of    the    Institution, 

*  Bibliotheque  Britannique,  Science  et  ^rts,  Vol.  XVII. 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  425 

Pictet  expressed  to  the  Count  his  surprise  that  in  so 
enlightened  and  advanced  a  country  as  England  it  had 
not  before  occurred  to  some  man  of  genius  to  anticipate 
the  plan.  He  reports  the  reply  of  the  Count. 

"No  doubt  others  before  myself  had  anticipated  the  benefits 
which  an  association  of  men  might  draw  from  uniting  their 
efforts  for  a  common  good.  But  sad  experience  has  generally 
proved  that  enterprises  designed  for  this  apparent  or  real  end 
are  not  slow  in  degenerating  and  being  perverted  to  the  private 
interests  of  a  few  individuals,  so  that  most  of  the  members  have 
been  duped.  The  result  has  been  such  as  to  warrant  distrust 
grounded  on  facts  very  mischievous  in  their  consequences.  I 
have  sought  to  make  sure  of  the  good  without  leaving  the  door 
open  to  abuses.  That  is  the  spirit  and  the  whole  tendency  of  our 
Institution,  as  our  rules  manifest.  If  I  succeed,  as  I  am  really 
bound  to  hope,  this  auspicious  enterprise  in  winning  confidence 
will  increase  my  means  and  opportunities,  and  the  Establish- 
ment will  acquire  a  consistency  proportioned  to  its  real  utility." 

Pictet  witnessed  in  the  Institution  the  experiments 
of  Dr.  Wollaston  in  galvanism,  and  the  decomposi- 
tion of  water  by  two  processes.  It  was  during  this 
visit  of  his  as  an  honored  guest  of  Rumford's  at  his 
famous  model  house  at  Brompton,  that  Pictet,  making 
use  of  his  fair  opportunities,  held  those  confidential 
interviews  with  his  host,  information  obtained  from 
which  was  quoted  on  an  early  page  of  this  memoir. 
It  is  reasonable  to  infer  that  the  Count  was  aware  of  his 
friend's  purpose  to  make  him  so  prominent  a  subject  of 
the  contributions  made  by  him  during  his  tour  to  the 
excellent  Geneva  journal,  of  which  he  was,  as  has  been 
said,  one  of  the  originators  and  editors,  —  the  Biblio- 
theque  Britannique.  It  is  here  that  we  find  a  full  de- 
scription of  the  Count  at  home,  or,  rather,  of  his  home. 

I   translate  the  following  from   his  ninth  letter  (Vol. 


426  Life  of  Coiint  Rumford. 

XIX.  Science  et  Arts,  January,  1802,  v.  s.).     It  is  dated 
London,  August  15,  1801. 

"I  have  been  living  for  the  last  eight  days  at  the  Elyssium, 
which  belongs  to  Count  Rumford,  and  I  lead  there  the  most 
pleasant  life  which  it  is  possible  to  imagine.  It  is  the  fitting 
time  for  attempting  to  describe  to  you  this  agreeable  and  in- 
genious structure.  The  house  forms  a  part  of  a  long  range  of 
edifices,  Brompton  Row,  about  a  mile  from  London,  which 
lines  the  great  road  that  conducts  to  the  bridges  of  Fulham  and 
Battersea.  Between  the  dwellings  and  the  carriage-road  is  a 
space  planted  with  trees  and  sown  with  grass,  —  an  arrangement 
generally  adopted  in  the  environs  of  the  capital,  and  which 
agreeably  combines  for  the  view  many  advantages.  The  win- 
dows have  a  double  glazing,  and  the  exterior  makes  a  three- 
sided  projection,  in  which  are  placed  vases  of  flowers  and 
odorous  shrubs,  which  you  may  have  at  your  pleasure  within  or 
outside  of  the  apartment,  according  as  you  open  or  close  the  in- 
ner sash.  The  table  on  which  these  vases  stand  is  perforated,  in 
order  to  furnish  the  plants  of  a  hot-house  character  on  it  with 
the  air  necessary  for  vegetation,  and  the  side  sashes  of  the  ex- 
terior windows  open  as  they  are  needed. 

u  The^JiojtfSeSias  five  stories,  including  the  offices,  which  in 
this  country  are  always  set  under  the  level  of  the  earth.  The 
arrangement  is  the  same  in  all  the  stories,  two  apartments  and  a 
staircase.  On  the  ground-floor  is  the  parlor,  where  morning 
visitors  are  received,  and  the  dining-room.  On  the  first  flight 
is  a  bedchamber,  and  a  saloon  for  company  ;  on  the  second,  the 
same  arrangement ;  on  the  third,  a  bedchamber  and  a  work- 
room for  the  occupant  of  the  dwelling.  In  this  room,  which 
has  a  view  of  the  country,  the  light  comes  in  through  a  set  of 
adjoining  windows  arranged  in  an  arc  of  a  circle,  through  which 
even  in  the  middle  of  the  apartment  you  may  see  a  quarter  of 
the  horizon.  Their  sills  are  arrayed  with  flowers  and  shrubs, 
and  the  eye,  looking  over  the  trees  and  the  neighboring  fields, 
seeing  nothing  intervening,  the  illusion  is  complete  ;  you  sup- 
pose yourself  to  be  in  the  country  close  to  a  garden  bordered  by 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  427 

a  park.  Back  of  the  main  house  is  a  structure  of  outbuildings 
a  which  enclose  a  stable  and  coach-house,  a  chemical  laboratory, 
room  for  a  valet,  one  for  a  carpenter,  &c.  The  two  buildings  are 
separated  by  a  small  garden,  but  there  is  a  communication  be- 
tween them  by  a  covered  gallery,  which  is  warmed  in  the  win- 
ter by  pipes  of  hot  air. 

"  The  agreeable  and  the  useful  have  been  combined  in  this 
abode  with  much  ingenuity  and  success.  You  divine  at  once 
that  everything  that  concerns  the  use  of  fuel,  whether  for  the 
kitchen  or  for  warmth,  has  been  carried  to  the  highest  degree 
of  economy  and  perfection.  The  mantel-piece  in  the  rooms 
makes  no  projection,  and  masked  as  it  is  in  the  summer  by  a 
border  of  painted  canvas,  you  confound  it  with  one  of  the 
panels  of  the  wainscoting.  These  panels  at  the  right  and 
the  left  of  the  fireplace  are  hung  on  sunken  hinges,  and  you 
raise  one  or  the  other  of  these,  in  the  style  of  a  table,  when  you 
wish  to  write  or  read  near  the  fire.  The  same  arrangement  is 
adapted  to  the  piers  which  separate  the  windows,  and  you  can 
at  your  will  produce  either  a  table  or  a  simple  panel,  when  you 
allow  it  to  fall  back  again.  The  wainscoting  coming  out  flush 
with  the  front  of  the  throat  of  the  chimney,  it  makes  no  farther 
projection,  and  this  arrangement  furnishes  in  depth  the  neces- 
sary place  for  setting  closets,  where  clothing,  books,  and  every- 
thing which  you  wish  to  keep  safe  from  dampness  and  dust,  is 
protected  and  disposed  of  invisibly. 

"  The  bedchambers  are  disguised  in  the  same  way,  that  is  to 
say,  the  bed  is  concealed  under  the  form  of  an  elegant  sofa,  of 
which  the  seat  is  formed  by  one  of  the  mattresses,  and  the 
other  is  constructed  in  a  way  to  fold  up  as  with  a  hinge  through 
the  length  of  the  back  part,  and  then  contracts  the  bed  by  its 
doubled  thickness  to  the  ordinary  size  of  an  ottoman.  Two 
cushions  ornament  the  ends.  Under  the  sofa  are  two  large  and 
deep  drawers  which  contain  the  bedding,  coverlet,  and  night- 
gear,  and  which  are  hidden  by  a  fringed  valance.  In  a  few 
minutes  the  sofa  is  converted  at  night  into  an  excellent  bed,  and 
in  the  morning  the  bed  becomes  for  the  day  an  ornamental 
piece  of  furniture. 


428  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  The  most  elegant  simplicity  is  observable  in  all  the  furni- 
ture, which  is  different  on  each  story;  and  even  in  the  choice  of 
the  colors  you  see  that  the  taste  of  the  owner  has  been  aided  by 
those  natural  rules  for  the  blending  of  tints  which,  as  he  himself 
has  discovered,  always  harmonize  for  the  eye  when  they  are  re- 
spectively the  complement  of  the  colors  which  the  whole  prismatic 
spectrum  presents.  You  see  that  these  discoveries  of  Newton 
can  be  applied  to  the  choice  of  a  ribbon  as  well  as  to  a  cosmos. 

"  I  forgot  to  tell  you  of  the  ingenious  and  convenient  arrange- 
ment of  the  dining-room.  Its  area  is  changeable  by  means  of  a 
partition  of  window-sashes  with  large  panes,  forming  a  very 
large  double  door,  which  opens  on  the  side  of  the  casements  for 
the  sunlight,  and  by  which  also  the  heat  escapes  in  the  winter. 
When  the  folding  doors  are  open  at  right  angles  they  correspond 
with  the  windows,  and  the  room  is  to  that  extent  enlarged  ;  the 
same  doors  form  then  two  side  recesses  which  answer  for  two 
sideboards,  communicating  within  and  outside  the  room,  by 
which  the  service  of  the  table  is  performed  without  the  servants 
having  to  come  in.  If  you  wish  to  contract  the  room  and  to 
preserve  its  warmth  by  the  effective  agency  of  double  windows, 
you  can  close  the  folding  doors,  and,  without  depriving  yourself 
of  ligh^J2*  oFlhe  charming  view  of  the  shrubbery  with  which  all 
the  windows  are  decked,  you  are  completely  protected  from  all 
chills. 

"  I  occupy  by  myself  half  of  this  charming  dwelling.  On 
the  ground-floor  is  my  working-room,  and  on  the  first  story  my 
bedchamber  and  parlor.  The  house  is  equipped  with  the  most 
perfect  simplicity  and  the  most  complete  order,  and  a  person 
could  not  conceive  a  more  pleasant  life,  nor  one  more  comfortable 
(why  do  we  not  adopt  that  word  which  we  need  in  our  lan- 
guage ?)  than  that  which  is  led  here.  Perfect  freedom  is  given 
and  enjoyed.  Our  first  tete-a-tete  takes  place  at  breakfast,  and 
I  never  leave  it  without  having  learned  something  new,  interest- 
ing, or  useful.  I  try  always  to  arrange  my  day's  work  with 
reference  to  engaging  my  friend  in  some  object  of  research 
which  is  common  to  us  ;  and  if  I  do  not  always  succeed  in  it, 
I  have  at  least  the  assurance  of  rejoining  him  in  the  evening, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  429 

and  then  for  two  hours  we  chat  a-bout  matters  which  interest 
us  alike,  and  I  cannot  describe  the  charm  which  I  find  in  these 
conversations.  I  make  notes  of  them  immediately  afterwards, 
for,  if  possible,  I  would  not  lose  a  word  of  them.  And  what  a 
life  is  his  !  His  memory  retraces  faithfully  all  the  principal 
facts,  and  even  all  the  anecdotes,  of  his  early  years.  I  press  him 
every  day  to  commit  these  things  to  writing.  He  objects,  and  his 
other  engrossing  occupations,  which  are  excessive,  leave  him  no 
time  for  it.  And  who  knows  if  he  will  ever  find  the  time  ?  I 
believe  it  is  my  duty,  as  a  friend,  to  profit  by  the  opportunity 
which  has  brought  me  near  to  him  to  try  to  draw  out  in  our 
intercourse  all  the  marked  incidents  of  his  life,  and  to  send  to 
you  in  confidence  these  biographical  particulars  which  you  may 
keep  in  your  portfolio.  I  am  favored  by  being  able  to  gather  as 
from  the  lips  of  two  of  his  oldest  and 'most  intimate  friends, 

whom  I  frequently  see,  Sir  Ch.  B[lagden]  and  Mr.  De  P , 

the  Bavarian  Envoy,  many  of  those  facts  which  .his  modesty 
conceals.  In  combining  all  these  means  I  shall  thus  have 
something  more  complete  and  more  authentic  than  we  read  about 
him  in  the  English  journals,  and  which  sometimes  make  him 
laugh.  And  to  trust  as  little  as  I  can  to  chance  in  carrying  out 
this  purpose,  I  will  profit  by  what  remains  of  my  letter  to  copy 
what  I  have  already  gathered.  I  will  complete  it,  if  I  can,  in 
my  next,  and  will  follow,  so  far  as  my  notes  will  allow,  the  order 
of  time."  [Here  is  added  the  memoir  given  on  previous  pages.] 

In  this  attempt  to  describe  with  such  minuteness 
the  novel  and  convenient  devices  which  Count  Rum- 
ford  had  introduced  into  his  house  at  Brompton,  Pictet 
was  simply  endeavoring  to  convey  to  readers  on  the 
Continent,  by  this  method,  something  of  the  privilege 
which  residents  in  and  near  London  enjoyed  of  satisfy- 
ing their  curiosity  by  observation.  The  ingenious  and 
tasteful  arrangements  in  that  house  made  it  for  several 
years  one  of  the  most  attractive  objects  for  curious 
sight-seers  ;  and  the  Count's  gratification,  and  perhaps 


43O  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

his  love  of  appreciation,  was  ministered  to  in  having 
the  edifice  freely  exhibited  to  visitors  from  all  classes  of 
society  who  thronged  to  examine  it.  Of  one  of  the  novel 
contrivances  in  that  edifice,  on  which  the  Count  greatly 
prided  himself,  Pictet  was  strangely  unobservant.  It 
was  what  the  Count  called  a  concealed  kitchen,  recom- 
mended and  described  by  him  in  his  Tenth  Essay. 
Two  of  these,  very  complete,  had  been  fitted  up  by  him 
in  the  Royal  Institution  as  models,  —  one  in  the  house- 
keeper's room,  the  other  in  the  great  kitchen.  He 
writes  :  "  There  are  also  two  kitchens  of  this  kind  in 
my  house  at  Brompton  in  two  adjoining  rooms,  which 
have  been  fitted  up  principally  with  a  view  to  showing 
that  all  the  different  processes  of  cookery  may  be  car- 
ried on  in  a  room  which,  on  entering  it,  nobody  would 
suspect  to  be  a  kitchen." 

And  he  proceeds  to  describe  the  contrivance  at  length, 
with  diagrams.* 

T^transtating  for  their  own  pages  Count  Rumford's 
Prospectus  of  the  Royal  Institution,  the  editors  of  the 
Bibliotheque  Britanniquef  introduce  it  with  the  follow- 
ing prefatory  remarks,  commencing  with  an  extract 
from  Madame  de  Stael's  essay  on  Literature  consid- 
ered in  its  Relations  to  Social  Institutions. 

"  '  Nothing  so  animates  and  tones  the  spirit  as  the  hope  of 
rendering  useful  service  to  the  human  race.  When  the  thought 
proves  the  immediate  precursor  of  action,  when  the  happy  pur- 
pose can  at  once  be  transformed  into  a  benevolent  institution, 
what  interest  will  a  man  not  find  in  the  development  of  his 
intelligence ! ' 

"  These  reflections  of  a  celebrated  woman  apply  with  full 
justice  to  all  the  enterprises  of  a  philanthropist  whom  we  have 

*  Tenth  Essay,  Chap.  XIV.  f   Science  et  Arts,  Vol.  XIV. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  431 

distinguished  among  the  first,  Count  Rumford,  whose  name 
now  resounds  through  Europe.  Yes,  without  doubt,  after  the 
spectacle  of  a  man  nobly  struggling  against  adversity,  this,  of  a 
man  of  genius  incessantly  engaged  in  promoting  the  welfare  of 
his  fellow-men,  is  the  noblest  which  can  be  offered  to  the  con- 
templation of  generous  souls,  and  to  the  imitation  of  those  who, 
animated  by  the  same  spirit,  and  strong  in  the  same  purpose, 
can  be  drawn  on  by  the  influence  of  the  example  to  the  noble 
career  of  benevolence. 

"  And  if  one  considers  that  genius  recognizes  in  the  sciences 
and  arts  its  implements  of  work,  its  most  energetic  resources, 
one  is  penetrated  by  a  most  profound  and  just  regard  for  objects 
of  pursuit  so  fertile  in  grand  results.  One  realizes  the  whole 
truth  of  this  reflection,  expressed  in  a  sentiment  of  the  writer 
just  quoted  :  '  In  examining,'  she  says,  '  the  actual  state  of  our 
enlightenment,  we  see  at  a  glance  that  our  true  riches  are  the 
sciences.'  This  avowal,  dropped  in  a  work  consecrated  to  and 
inspired  by  an  enthusiasm  for  literature,  says  a  great  deal. 
But  the  labors  of  Count  Rumford  surpass  it.  He  has  suc- 
ceeded in  consummating  a  magnificent  enterprise  conceived  and 
executed  in  less  than  one  year.  He  has  aimed  to  increase  the 
points  of  contact  between  the  sciences  and  the  arts,  to  vivify 
the  one  by  the  other,  and  to  apply  them  together  to  the  needs  of 
humanity  and  to  the  perfecting  of  social  blessings.  The  value 
of  the  paper  which  presents  his  Proposals  and  the  description  of 
his  Institution  is  doubled  by  the  fact,  that  in  another  point  of 
view  it  may  be  regarded  as  an  eloquent  discourse  upon  the  ad- 
vantage and  the  means  of  making  the  sciences  and  the  arts  re- 
ciprocally helpful  to  their  own  perfection.  In  this  point  of 
view  it  may  claim  the  attention  of  all  those  among  our  readers 
who  are  interested  in  the  progress  of  this  class  of  human  attain- 
ments. We  proceed  to  translate  nearly  the  whole  of  it." 

Then  follows  the  substance  of  the  Proposals  and 
Prospectus,  translated  into  French. 

It  would  have  been  exceptional  to  all  human  experi- 
ence, alike  in  the  organization  and  administration  of 


432  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

scientific  and  benevolent  schemes,  as  well  as  of  institu- 
tions which  are  supposed  to  be  more  likely  to  engage  the 
jealousies  or  rivalries  of  men,  had  no  private  or  public 
variance  arisen  in  connection  with  the  early  history  of 
the  Royal  Institution.  There  are  traces  of  some  per- 
sonal alienations  as  having  occurred  in  the  first  year  of 
its  existence,  and  the  compass  or  the  cumbersomeness 
of  its  plans,  notwithstanding  its  seemingly  large  re- 
sources, required  some  modification. 

I  will  offer  as  full  and  intelligible  an  account  of  these 
matters  of  variance  as  I  have  been  able  to  verify  from 
the  means  within  my  reach.  Dean  Peacock,  in  his 
Life  of  Dr.  Thomas  Young,*  contents  himself  with 
the  following  curt  narration  :  — 

"  In  the  year  1801,  Young  accepted  the  office  of  Professor 
of  Natural  Philosophy  at  the  Royal  Institution,  which  had  been 
established  in  the  year  preceding,  chiefly  by  the  exertions  of 
the  well^kfiown  Sir  Benjamin  Thompson,  Count  Rumford.  It 
walTdesigned  Vs  a  great  metropolitan  school  of  science,  where 
lectures  should  be  given,  models  of  useful  instruments  exhibited, 
and  collections  of  books  on  science  and  of  chemical  and  philo- 
sophical apparatus  formed  on  the  most  magnificent  scale.  Its 
founder,  if  such  he  may  be  termed,  had  further  views  also,  of 
making  it  subsidiary  to  the  promotion  of  many  useful  projects 
and  inquiries  which  he  had  recently  proposed  in  his  Essays, 
which  enjoyed  an  extraordinary  popularity.  After  managing 
the  affairs  of  the  Institution  for  a  few  months,  and  commencing 
the  editing  of  its  journal,  he  quarrelled  with  some  of  the  direc- 
tors and  abandoned  the  scheme  altogether.  The  conducting  of 
the  journal  was  thenceforward  intrusted  to  the  joint  care  of  Dr. 
Young  and  his  colleague  Mr.  Davy,  at  that  time  Professor  of 
Chemistry,  &c." 

Having  found  no  reference  made  by  Count  Rumford 

*  London,  John  Murray,  1855,  p.  134. 


Life  of  Count  Rum  ford.  433 

himself,  in  any  printed  or  manuscript  papers  from  his 
pen  which  have  come  to  my  hands,  to  any  "  quarrel " 
of  his  with  the  directors  of  the  Royal  Institution,  or 
even  to  any  modification  of  his  original  plan  found  to 
be  necessary  in  its  practical  work,  I  drew  upon  the 
kindness  of  its  present  Secretary,  Dr.  H.  Bence  Jones, 
for  such  information  as  he  might  be  able  and  disposed 
to  give  me,  if  possible  from  the  records.  He  has 
most  courteously  responded  by  acquainting  me  with 
what  he  knows  or  can  surmise  about  the  matter.  He 
writes  to  me  that  "  unluckily  no  one  took  any  care  of 
the  original  documents  of  the  Royal  Institution.  The 
digested  minutes  of  the  business  are  all  that  remain. 
All  the  living  letters  that  would  have  told  their  own 
history  are  lost.'*  Being  himself  engaged  at  present  in 
writing  a  sketch  of  the  early  history  of  the  Institution, 
he  intends  to  show  — 

u  How  we  departed  from  Count  Rumford's  scheme,  and  by  the 
genius  of  Davy  became  the  place  for  scientific  research.  You 
asked  me  about  the  laboratory.  Essentially,  Davy's  and  Fara- 
day's laboratory  was  that  which  Rumford  built.  But  the  room 
that  Rumford  built  was  not  the  room  he  originally  intended  for 
the  laboratory.  Workshops  and  mo'del  rooms  for  physical 
things  for  the  benefit  of  the  poor  and  sick  were  more  in  accord- 
ance with  his  ideas  than  a  chemical  laboratory.  Even  the 
kitchen  was  far  more  to  him  than  analytical  investigation. 
True,  his  idea  of  a  laboratory  was  a  kitchen  and  a  chemist.  Mr. 
Hatchett  saw  that  the  dark  room  would  not  do,  and  got  another 
room  built  with  four  skylights,  before  the  model  and  lecture 
rooms  over  the  dark  room  were  finished.  In  September,  1799? 
Rumford  was  authorized  to  engage  Dr.  Garnett,  the  first  Pro- 
fessor of  Chemistry  and  Physics.  He  came  on  the  23d  of 
December.  Before  February,  1801,  there  was  war  between 
Garnett  and  Rumford.  It  broke  out  regarding  Garnett's  lec- 
28 


434  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

tures.  Garnett  published  two  syllabusses,  which  the  managers 
objected  to.  On  the  i6th  of  February  Rumford  engaged  Davy. 
On  March  u  Davy  came.  On  the  I5th  of  June  the  resigna- 
tion of  Garnett  was  accepted.  On  July  6,  Rumford  was  au- 
thorized to  engage  Dr.  Young. 

"  It  is  very  clear  to  me  that  Count  Rumford  fell  out  with 
Mr.  Bernard,  and  with  Sir  John  Hippesley.  The  fact  was  that 
Rumford's  idea  of  workshops  and  kitchen,  industrial  school, 
mechanics'  institution,  model  exhibition,  social  club-house,  and 
scientific  committees  to  do  everything,  &c.,  &c.,  was  much  ^oo 
big  and  unworkable  for  a  private  body,  and  was  fitted  only  for 
an  absolute  wealthy  government,  and  was  going  rapidly  into 
difficulties  which,  in  1803,  led  to  the  proposal  to  shut  up  the 
affair  and  sell  it  ofF.  Rumford,  seeing  he  could  not  have  his 
way,  went  to  Paris.  Mr.  Bernard  and  Sir  John  Hippesley 
again  took  up  the  Institution,  and  by  Davy's  help  carried  it  on, 
without  any  workshops,  or  mechanics'  institute,  or  kitchen,  or 
model  exhibition,  but  with  experimental  researches,  libraries, 
and  a  mineralogical  collection,  which  were,  according  to  Rum- 
ferj's  ideas^  for  the  benefit  of  the  rich,  and  by  no  means  capa- 
ble of  doing  any  good  to  the  poor,  —  the  object  he  had  in  view 
in  his  society  for  the  diffusion  of  useful  knowledge." 

I  shall  not  venture  to  question  either  the  facts  or  the 
opinions  drawn  from  them  in  Dr.  Jones's  letter  to  me, 
and  shall  wait  with  interest,  as  will  so  many  others,  for 
his  promised  volume.  Indeed,  I  have  some  indepen- 
dent grounds  to  sustain  his  views.  It  may  be  men- 
tioned here,  however,  that,  as  will  soon  be  related, 
Count  Rumford  left  England,  as  it  proved  for  the  last 
time,  in  May,  1802,  his  purpose  and  desire  to  return 
there  having  been  impeded  by  obstacles  of  war  and 
other  circumstances.  For  at  least  a  year,  then,  previous 
to  the  time  at  which  there  seems  to  have  been  a  pros- 
pect of  the  failure  of  the  Institution,  his  presence  and 
influence  had  been  withdrawn. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  435 

Some  light  —  though,  it  must  be  confessed,  not  to  the 
extent  of  imparting  full  information,  may  be  thrown 
upon  this  incidental  but  interesting  point  in  the  history 
of  the  Royal  Institution  by  a  contemporaneous  pub- 
lication, reference  to  which  has  thus  far  been  deferred 
in  these  pages  as  it  contains  matter  that  may  most  fitly 
be  quoted  here. 

Just  at  the  close  of  the  last  century  and  the  beginning 
of  this  there  was  published  in  London  a  series  of  five 
volumes  of  contemporary  biography,  entitled  "  Pub- 
lic Characters."  In  the  volume  published  in  October, 
1802,  appears  a  short  biographical  sketch  of  Count 
Rumford,  which  bears  date  1801-2,  and  which  must 
undoubtedly  have  passed  under  his  own  eye,  at  least  in 
print.  I  have  not  ascertained  by  whom  it  was  written, 
but  the  writer  of  it  affirms  that  he  received  information 
from  some  of  Rumford's  American  countrymen.  After 
a  statement,  in  the  main  correct,  of  the  more  important 
incidents  in  his  career,  the  writer  proceeds -as  follows:  — 

"  It  was  also  owing  to  his  exertions  that  the  Royal  Institute 
[sic]  was  first  established,  and  should  any  beneficial  advantages 
arise  from  it  hereafter,  he,  and  he  alone,  ought  undoubtedly  to 
have  the  whole  and  sole  merit.  But  candor  will  not  allow  us 
to  conceal  that  the  effects  likely  to  be  derived  from  a  new 
society  of  this  kind  are  net  such  as  could  have  been  either 
wished  or  expected.  In  the  establishment  of  her  National 
Institute,  France  exhibited  a  gigantic  superiority  in  respect  to 
human  intellect,  and  by  concentrating  in  one  common  focus 
everything  respectable,  either  in  the  sciences  or  belles  lettres, 
exhibited  such  a  blaze  of  genius  as  had  never  been  beheld  before 
in  Europe." 

The  writer  of  the  biography  says  here  in  a  note :  — 
"  As  a  proof  of  this,  the  old  members  of  the  Academy  of 


436  Life  of  Coimt  Rumford. 

Sciences,  esteemed  the  first   in  Europe  during    the  monarchy, 
constitute  only  Class   I   of  the  National  Institute." 

He  then  proceeds  :  — 

"  We  appear  to  be  successful  in  mimicking  the  name  alone, 
for  to  have  rivalled  the  establishment  (if  it  were  possible  for  us 
to  rival  it  ! )  it  would  have  been  necessary  to  have  called  forth 
the  exertions  of  every  man  among  us  conspicuously  eminent  in 
the  mathematics,  practical  astronomy,  oratory,  natural  and 
civil  history,  painting,  poetry,  music,  &c.,  &c.  To  have  re- 
warded these,  Parliament  should  have  provided  ample  salaries  ; 
and  to  have  prevented  the  whole  from  dwindling  into  a  minis- 
terial job,  the  members  ought  to  have  been  elected  by  ballot. 
Instead  of  this  a  puny  imitation  was  adopted,  and  one  professor 
only  appointed.  True  it  is,  there  are  few  men  in  the  kingdom 
who  could  have  been  selected  perhaps  with  greater  propriety, 
or  who  possess  more  various  powers,  than  the  gentleman  in 
question,  —  Dr.  Garnett,  a  man  of  considerable  eminence  in  the 
philosophical  and  literary  world  ;  it  is  the  inefficacy  and  nullity 
"o^the  pla\i  only  that  is  here  arraigned,  without  intending  to 
throw  the  slightest  blame  on  the  original  projector,  who  was 
perhaps  cramped  in  his  views  and  impeded  in  his  exertions." 

In  a  note  to  this  last  paragraph  the  writer  communi- 
cates the  information,  such  as  it  is,  which  must  relate  to 
the  cc  quarrel,"  previously  referred  to. 

u  Since  writing  the  above,  the  editor  has  learned  that  many 
disputes  have  taken  place  relative  to  the  management  of  the 
Royal  Institution,  in  consequence  of  which  Dr.  Garnett  has 
found  himself  reduced  to  the  necessity  of  resigning  his  situation. 
He  also  hears  with  great  sorrow  that  a  breach  has  taken  place 
in  the  friendship  that  subsisted  between  the  Count  of  Rumford 
and  Dr.  Garnett  ;  but,  as  he  is  unacquainted  with  the  particu- 
lars, he  will  not  presume  to  censure  either  of  the  parties  in 
question."  * 

*  An  American  editor  selected  from  the  five  volumes  of  the  London  edition  of 
"  Public  Characters"  materials  enough  to  fill  a  single  volume,  the  contents  of  which 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  437 

As  to  the  matter  of  alleged  variances  between  Count 
Rumford  and  the  managers  of  the  Royal  Institution, 
I  can  say  little  more  than  that  I  have  met  with  no  in- 
formation which  would  warrant  even  the  inference  that 
he,  in  any  case  or  to  any  extent,  was  at  issue  with  them 
as  a  body,  or  that  they  as  such  were  upon  any  subject 
in  opposition  to  him.  With  individuals  once  sharing 
friendly  and  very  cordial  relations  with  him,  Rumford 
did  undoubtedly  cease  to  hold  such  relations,  whether 
because  he  alienated  them  wilfully,  or  because  they 
found  him  personally  or'  officially  disagreeable  to  them. 
In  another  connection  I  shall  have  occasion  to  quote 
the  repeated  assertions  of  his  once  very  intimate  com- 
panion and  associate,  Sir  Charles  Blagden,  that  he  had 
parted  friendship  with  the  Count  and  should  no  longer 
correspond  with  him.  This  variance,  however,  was 
strictly  personal,  having  apparently  no  connection  with 
the  affairs  or  the  management  of  the  Royal  Institution. 
Dr.  Young  would  seem  to  have  had  no  quarrel  with 
Rumford.  Of  this  eminent  philosopher,  Dr.  Jones 
very  justly  says,  in  a  letter  now  before  me:  "Young 
was  never  out  of  scientific  war,  and  never  got  the  honor 
he  deserved.  His  is  a  strange  history.  He  ought  to 

he  thought  would  be  generally  interesting  to  the  people  of  the  United  States.  This 
volume,  published  in  Baltimore  in  1803,  is  the  one  from  which  the  above  extracts  are 
made  (pp.  377,  378). 

Though  aside  from  the  point  now  engaging  us,  I  am  prompted  to  quote  the  next 
paragraph  of  this  biographical  sketch,  as  follows  :  — 

*<  Count  Rumford  is  allowed  to  be  a  man  of  profound  research,  close  application, 
and  extensive  science.  His  house  at  Brompton  is  well  calculated  to  give  an  idea  of 
the  owner.  The  uppermost  story  is  converted  into  a  laboratory  for  chemical  experi- 
ments. His  chimneys  are  contrived  so  as  to  economize  fuel,  prevent  smoke,  and  pro- 
duce heat  5  while  his  double  windows,  constructed  in  imitation  of  those  of  Germany, 
Sweden,  Denmark,  and  Russia,  exclude  the  frost  during  the  winter,  and  serve  as  so 
many  conservatories  for  such  plants  as  are  incapable  of  being  inured  to  bear  the  rigors 
of  our  climate." 


438  Life  of  Coiint  Rumford. 

have  been  the  great  man  of  England.  He  should  have 
given  himself  entirely  to  science.  What  an  unfortunate 
man  he  was  in  the  number  and  size  of  his  disputes  ! 
Whatever  he  touched  led  to  a  fight.  And  yet  he  was  a 
gentleman  and  a  Quaker  by  birth." 

Dr.  Young  speaks  in  high  terms  of  the  character  of 
Rumford's  Experiments  on  Heat.*  As  Corresponding 
Secretary  of  the  Royal  Society,  it  was  Young's  official 
duty  to  transmit  to  Malus  and  Fresnel  the  Rumford 
Medals,  as  awarded  to  them.  Writing  to  the  latter  in 
1827,  he  accompanies  the  medals,  and  a  draft  for 
,£55  i6j.,  the  accumulated  surplus  income  of  the  fund, 
with  a  letter  containing  these  sentences:  "At  last, 
then,  I  trust  you  will  no  longer  have  to  complain  of 
the  neglect  which  your  experiments  have  for  a  time 
undergone  in  this  country.  I  should  also  claim  some 
Bright  tcrparticipate  in  the  compliment  which  is  tacitly 
palcf  to  myself  in  common  with  you  by  this  adjudica- 
tion, but,  considering  that  more  than  a  quarter  of  a 
century  is  past  since  my  principal  experiments  >  were 
made,  I  can  only  feel  it  a  sort  of  anticipation  of  posthu- 
mous fame,  which  I  have  never  particularly  coveted. "f 

It  would  seem  to  be  only  through  the  strange  chances 
by  which  allotments  of  honor  and  glory  are  dropped  or 
withheld,  that  Young  himself  should  never  have  re- 
ceived the  Rumford  prize. 

The  sharp  and  sweeping  assertion  of  Dean  Peacock, 
that  Rumford  "abandoned  the  scheme  of  the  Institu- 
tion altogether,"  is  not  sustained  by  facts.  The  friends 
and  coadjutors  whom  he  had  drawn  in  to  his  design, 
and  who  undertook  with  him  its  early  management  and 

*  Miscellaneous  Works,  edited  by  Dean  Peacock.      Vol.  I.  pp.  83,  1 68. 

f  Miscellaneous  Works,  Vol.  I.  p.  409. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  439 

contributed  their  services,  may  have  found  practical 
difficulties  in  its  administration.  The  economical  and 
utilitarian  objects  of  the  widest  popular  interest  and 
activity,  which  were  always  so  prominent  in  the  schemes 
of  Count  Rumford,  may  have  involved  a  too  compli- 
cated or  diffusive  responsibility.  Possibly,  one  or 
more  of  the  men  who  were  ready  to  work  for  the  In- 
stitution in  its  higher  scientific  directions,  might  have 
been  disposed  to  subordinate  or  slight  the  purposes 
which  the  founder  regarded  as  primary  and  most  ser- 
viceable. That  he  had  variances  with  one  or  many  of 
his  associates  would  by  no  means  prove  an  error  of 
judgment  or  a  fault  of  temper  on  his  part,  if  there 
were  not  other  indications  of  a  morbid  sensitiveness 
and  irritability  that  had  come  over  him  at  this  period 
of  his  life.  It  is  certain,  however,  that  the  aim  and  the 
work  of  the  Institution  were  modified  some  time  after 
the  Count  was  in  circumstances  either  to  approve  of 
and  help  in,  or  to  oppose,  the  change. 
Dr.  Jones  writes  to  me  as  follows : — 

"In  1810,  March  3,  Davy  gave  a  lecture  'on  the  plan  which 
it  is  proposed  to  adopt  for  improving  the  Royal  Institution,  and 
rendering  it  permanent/  This  gives  a  general  view  of  the 
change  which  took  place  in  Rumford's  plan,  but  it  gives  no 

names I  have  as  yet  got  nothing  more  definite  except 

a  statement,  which  I  cannot  find  to  quote,  on  the  number  of 
enemies  that  Rumford  made  before  he  left  in  1802.  But  of 
indefinite  corroborating  facts  there  are  many.  The  greatest  is 
that  his  relationship  with  Mr.  Bernard  and  the  other  managers, 
excepting  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  ceased  entirely.  He  wrote  to  the 
clerk  of  the  Institution  that  che  wished  to  hear  how  things  went 
on,  for  he  had  no  one  to  tell  him.'  The  day  almost  that  he 
left,  his  arrangements  were  changed,  regarding  the  terms  of 
admission.  The  thing  was  done  hastily.  The  great  object  he 


440  Life  of  Count  Rum  ford. 

had  in  view  of  a  mechanics'  school,  workshop,  &c.  was  imme- 
diately stopped.  The  favorable  report  he  made  of  the  success 
of  his  work — a  xeport  read  after  he  had  almost  started  —  was 
discredited  by  Mr.  Bernard,  and  I  am  much  mistaken  if  the 
managers  did  not  suspect  the  accounts  'had  been  cooked,'  so 
to  say,  for  they  called  in  an  accountant.  Mr.  Bernard  says, 
4  Upon  the  whole  the  visitors  have  the  pleasure  of  stating  to  the 
annual  meeting,  that  they  conceive  there  is  nothing  that  merits 
censure,  and  much  that  deserves  approbation/  But  not  a  bit 
of  approbation  do  they  give,  that  I  can  see.  Count  Rumford's 
name  never  occurs  in  the  minutes  of  the  managers,  and  they 
ought  to  have  given  him  the  highest  praise,  at  least  for  his  ideas 
in  forming  '  the  Rumford  Institution,'  as  I  shall  call  it.  The 
Bernard  Institution,  which  came  after  it  for  seven  years,  was 
nothing  but  giving  c  fashion  to  science,'  instead  of  '  usefulness 
of  science  to  poor  and  rich,'  which  is  my  motto  for  Rumford's 
Institution.  But  his  idea  was  utterly  beyond  a  private  society. 
It  included  everything,  —  the  industrial  exhibition,  the  me- 
chanics' school  and  institute,  the  association  for  scientific  in- 
e  club  with  a  school  of  cookery,  the  Society  for 
of  Useful  Knowledge,  lectures  and  journals,  &c. 
All  were  to  be  in  one  building  under  Rumford's  dictatorship  ;  and 
if  he  had  had  money  and  support  enough,  in  three  more  years  he 
would  have  done  the  work.  But  his  lieutenant,  Webster,  Assist- 
ant Professor  of  Geology  at  the  London  University  and  Assistant 
Secretary  of  the  Geological  Society,  was  deposed,  and  fashion- 
able science  began  in  1803,  and  has  gone  on  up  to  this  day. 
The  support  of  the  laboratory,  and  the  proud  deeds  of  Davy 
and  Faraday  have  saved  us  from  being  a  lecture-shop  for  ca  num- 
ber of  silly  women  and  dilettanti  philosophers,'  —  which  was  the 
character  given  of  us  when  Thomas  Young  was  lecturing. 
When  Rumford  left  England,  in  May,  1802,  he  certainly  in- 
tended to  return.  But  he  never  says  a  word  about  coming  back 
to  his  Institution.  He  keeps  up  no  relations  with  the  managers, 
nor  corresponded  with  any  one  of  them  that  I  can  find.  For  in 
1804  he  sends  a  sort  of  message  through  the  clerk  to  the 
managers,  about  a  bill.  He  sends  his  regards  to  Davy  and 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  441 

Young,  but  little  more.  I  had  some  hopes  of  getting  some  cor- 
respondence of  Sir  J.  Hippesley,  who,  next  to  B-ernard,  took  the 
most  active  part  in  the  Institution,  but  am  disappointed." 

The  Royal  Institution  has  had  an  honorable  history, 
and  for  the  most  part  one  singularly  free  from  acrimo- 
nious contentions,  personal  variances,  and  dividing 
issues  about  elections  to  membership  or  the  choice  of 
officers.  In  this  peaceful  and  quiet  course  it  has  been 
favorably  distinguished  above  even  the  Royal  Society, 
which  has  passed  through  many  severe  agitations  and 
many  critical  periods.  The  courses  of  lectures  given 
successively  before  the  Institution  by  Drs.  Young  and 
Dalton,  by  Sydney  Smith,  Faraday,  and  Tyndal,  have 
kept  it  before  the  public  as  acting  with  fresh  vigor 
among  the  higher  agencies  alike  for  engaging  the  high- 
est professional  talent  and  for  advancing  and  popular- 
izing science  among  the  masses.  Undoubtedly  it  has 
yielded  to  some  modifications  of  the  original  design  and 
intent  of  its  founder ;  not  more  so,  however,  than  to 
admit  of  the  adaptations  which  time  requires  of  all 
organized  bodies  and  of  all  institutions  working  by  a 
code  of  rules  which,  because  they  are  admirably  adapted 
to  the  exigencies  first  served  by  them,  would  become 
antiquated  if  they  did  not  yield  to,  and  in  fact  assimi- 
late, the  new  elements  of  progress.  Yet,  as  we  read  over 
the  pamphlet  prepared  by  Count  Rumford  nearly  three 
quarters  of  a  century  ago,  and  note  how  comprehensive 
and  elastic  was  the  scheme  proposed  by  him,  and  how 
directly  and  enthusiastically  it  assumed  the  office  of 
working  in  every  way  for  the  good  of  common  people, 
we  can  hardly  apply  the  terms  "  modification "  or 
"change"  to  its  adoption  of  any  means  which  would  serve 
its  great  end.  Perhaps  if  we  could  imagine  the  Count 


442  Life  of  Count  Riunford. 

himself  as  being  an  unseen  auditor  of  all  the  lecturers 
who  have  occupied  the  platform  in  Albemarle  Street, 
we  might  expect  it  would  have  been  with  a  degree  of 
surprise  that  he  would  have  listened  to  the  wit  and 
humor  of  Sydney  Smith  as  he  there  discoursed  upon 
moral  philosophy.  Was  it  in  compHment  to  the  Count, 
or  as  a  piece  of  his  raillery,  that  the  jesting  divine,  in 
his  third  lecture,  described  what  Priestley  did  for  Hart- 
ley's system  as  "  Rumfordizing"  it?* 

Sir  James  Mackintosh,  writing  from  Bombay  in  1806, 
to  his  friend  Richard  Sharp,  Esq.,  London,  announces 
his  desire  to  return  to  England  in  1809,  and  his  wish 
to  lecture  in  London  for  eight  or  nine  years  on  moral 
philosophy.  He  adds:  "Your  account  of  the  Lon- 
don Institution  has  delighted  and  tantalized  me.  I 
wish  I  were  a  professor  !  But  the  printed  paper  is  too 
general  to  admit  of  any  discussion.  You  do  not  say 
Jjgvv  Inany  and  who  are  to  be  professors.  It  may 
surely  be)  a  little  more  solid  than  the  fashionable  nerves 
of  Albemarle  Street  could  endure,  without  ceasing  to  be 
popular."  •}• 

Dr.  Jones,  in  the  letter  of  his  last  quoted,  refers  to 
the  raillery  of  which  the  Institution  had  been  the  sub- 
ject in  the  attempt  to  make  science  fashionable.  But 
the  jeers  and  ridicule  which  it  encountered  from  this 

*  Elementary  Sketches  of  Moral  Philosophy  delivered  at  the  Royal  Institution. 
By  the  late  Rev.  Sydney  Smith.  London,  1850,  p.  49. 

A  very  interesting  sketch  of  the  origin  and  history  of  the  Royal  Institution  is  given 
by  Mons.  Ed.  Mailly,  in  his  "  Essai  sur  les  Institutions  Scientifiques  de  la  Grande 
Bretagne  et  de  1'Irlande  "  (Bruxelles,  1867),  though  the  writer  perpetuates  some  of 
the  common  errors  in  the  short  biographical  account  of  Rumford  which  precedes  it. 
A  translation  of  this  sketch,  the  errors  just  mentioned  being  left  without  correction, 
is  given  in  the  collections  published  by  the  Smithsonian  Institution  for  1867. 

f  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  the  Right  Hon.  Sir  James  Mackintosh.  By  his  Son. 
London,  1836.  Vol.  I.  p.  290. 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  443 

comparatively  venial  weakness,  in  turning  social  caprices 
to  the  service  of  science,  was  but  a  slight  trial  for  the 
dignity  of  the  Institution  to  bear,  in  comparison  with 
the  flood  of  sarcasm,  contempt,  and  misrepresentation 
which  had  been  visited  upon  the  Royal  Society.  That 
satirical  preacher,  Dr.  South,  in  his  oration  at  the 
opening  of  the  theatre  at  Oxford,  had  spoken  of  the 
worthies  whom  the  second  Charles  had  endowed  with 
Charter  and  Mace,  as  admiring  nothing  save  pulices, 
pediculos,  et  se  ipsos.  Butler,  in  his  "  Elephant  in  the 
Moon/  had  made  sharp  fun  of  their'  subjects  and 
methods  of  investigation.  The  witty  Dr.  King  thought 
it  worth  his  while  to  gather  and  publish  a  burlesque 
collection  of  "Useful  Transactions  in  Philosophy  and 
other  Sorts  of  Learning,"  for  the  purpose  of  present- 
ing a  roguish  parallel  with  the  veritable  treatises  and 
essays  of  the  Royal  Society.  The  excellent  Wot- 
ton,  in  his  "Reflections  upon  Ancient  and  Modern 
Learning,"  seems  to  have  quailed  under  this  bantering 
spirit  as  turned  against  science  and  philosophy.  He 
seems  even  to  have  thought  that  knowledge  had  seen 
its  best  days  for  his  generation.  "The  humor  of  the 
age,"  he  writes,  c<  is  visibly  altered  from  what  it  had 
been  thirty  years  ago.  Though  the  Royal  Society  has 
weathered  the  rude  attacks  of  Stubbe,  yet  the  sly  in- 
sinuations of  the  men  of  wit,  with  the  public  ridiculing 
of  all  who  spend  their  time  and  fortunes  in  scientific  or 
curious  researches,  have  so  taken  off  the  edge  of  those 
who  have  opulent  fortunes  and  a  love  to  learning,  that 
these  studies  begin  to  be  contracted  amongst  physicians 
and  mechanics." 

In   three  very  caustic   articles    contributed  by    Lord 
Brougham  to  the  Edinburgh  Review,  exhibiting  his  flip- 


444  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

pancy  as  a  writer  at  that  time  in  its  intensest  form,*  on 
Dr.  Young's  Bakerian  Lecture  on  Light  and  Colors, 
and  his  paper  on  "  Colors  not  before  described,"  the 
critic,  going,  as  it  proved,  beyond  his  depth,  exposed 
himself,  rather  than  his  subject,  to  ridicule.  Dr. 
Young,  who  in  the  productions  thus  contemptuously 
assailed  is  said,  by  his  biographer,  to  have  established 
the  bases  of  the  most  important  advancement  which  the 
science  of  physical  optics  had  made  since  the  time  of 
Newton,  published  a  masterly  "Reply/'  in  1804,  of 
which,  however,  the  author  reports  that  only  a  single 
copy  was  sold.  Mention  is  here  made  of  the  matter, 
simply  because  in  this  reply  Dr.  Young  introduced  the 
following  reference  to  his  connection  with  the  Royal 
Institution  :  — 


\s 
otrj 


The  reviewer  has  thought  proper  to  unite,  in  several  in- 
stance^ with  his  invectives  against  me  some  ridicule  of  the 
objects  of  the  Royal  Institution  of  Great  Britain, — an  Institu- 
tion in  which  its  managers  have  studied  to  concentrate  all  that 
is  useful  in  science  or  elegant  in  literature.  This  connection 
appears  to  him  to  add  so  much  weight  to  his  arguments  that  he 
has  chosen,  without  further  provocation,  to  insinuate  its  ex- 
istence more  than  a  year  after  it  has  been  dissolved.  I  accepted 
the  appointment  of  Professor  of  Natural  Philosophy  in  the 
Royal  Institution  as  an  occupation  which  would  fill  up  agree- 
ably and  advantageously  such  leisure  hours  as  a  young  prac- 
titioner of  physic  must  expect  to  be  left  free  from  professional 
cares.  I  was  led  to  hope  that  I  should  be  able  to  impress  an 
audience,  formed  of  the  most  respectable  inhabitants  of  the 
metropolis,,  with  such  a  partiality  as  the  moderately  well-in- 
formed are  inclined  to  entertain  for  those  who  appear  to  know 
even  a  little  more  than  themselves  of  matters  of  science. 
While  I  held  the  situation,  I  wished  to  make  my  lectures  as 

*  Edinburgh  Review,  Nos.  II.  and  IX.,  1803,  1804. 


Life  of  Coiint  Rumford.  445 

intelligible  as  the  nature  of  the  subjects  permitted  ;  but  I  must 
confess  that  it  was  not  my  ambition  to  render  them  a  substitute 
for  those  of  any  superficial  experimenter  that  was  in  the  habit 
of  delivering  courses  of  natural  philosophy  for  the  amusement 
of  boarding-schools.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  imperfec- 
tions of  my  lectures,  it  cannot  be  asserted,  except  perhaps  in 
the  Edinburgh  Review,  that  they  were  fit  for  audiences  of  ladies 
of  fashion  only.  After  fulfilling  for  two  years  the  duties  of 
the  Professorship,  I  found  them  so  incompatible  with  the  pur- 
suits of  a  practical  physician,  that,  in  compliance  with  the 
advice  of  my  friends,  I  gave  notice  of  my  wish  to  resign  the 
office."* 

Rumford's  original  and  noble  design,  frankly  avowed, 
certainly  was  to  make  a  regard  for  the  welfare  of  the 
common  people,  their  relief  and  thrift  and  comfort, 
"  fashionable."  Nor  would  he  probably  have  felt  the 
least  objection  to  investing  science  with  the  same  attrac- 
tion. Of  late  years  the  lectures  before  the  Royal  In- 
stitution have  not  been  wanting  in  solidity  of  substance 
as  dealing  with  themes  which  engage  the  foremost 
natural  philosophers  of  our  times.  Sir  John  Lubbock's 
lectures  on  the  Origin  of  Civilization  and  the  Primi- 
tive Condition  of  Man,  delivered  in  1868;  those  of 
Professor  Humphrey  on  the  Architecture  of  the  Hu- 
man Body  and  those  of  Professor  Odling  on  the 
Chemistry  of  Vegetable  Products,  delivered  in  1870, — 
are  among  the  latest  contributions  made  by  profound 
investigators  to  the  broadest  popular  advancement  in 
science.  Max  M tiller's  two  courses  were  attractive  and 
instructive. 

I  will  here  add  the  remainder  of  Pictet's  letter,  written 
while  he  was  still  in  close  intercourse  with  his  friend. 

"Towards   the  autumn   of  1800,    Count   Rumford  went  to 

*  Miscellaneous  Works,  Vol.  I.  pp.  214,  »«S- 


446  Life  of  Cozint  Riimford. 

Scotland.  The  magistrates  of  Edinburgh  made  him  a  visit  of 
ceremony,  gave  him  a  dinner  in  the  City  Hall,  and  added  to 
these  marks  of  distinction  the  freedom  of  the  city,  expressed  in 
the  most  flattering  terms.  They  consulted  him  on  measures 
for  improving  their  public  charitable  institutions  and  for  abolish- 
ing mendicity.  They  put  the  work  into  his  hands,  and  this 
great  undertaking  was  completed  in  less  than  a  month,  with  full 
success.  No  more  beggars  are  seen  in  Edinburgh,  and  all  indi- 
gent persons  there  able  to  work  have  become  industrious. 

"  The  Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh  and  that  of  Medicine 
made  the  Count  an  Honorary  Member,  and  the  University  gave 
him  the  diploma  of  a  Doctor  of  Laws.  I  regret  that  I  am  not 
able  to  transcribe  this  instrument,  which  was  inserted  in  the 
Edinburgh  Gazette.  It  is  of  the  most  elegant  latinity,  and 
expresses  laconically  and  justly  the  obligations  of  humanity  to 
my  illustrious  friend. 

"  During  his  stay  in  this  city  he  was  occupied  in  supervising 
the  introduction  in  that  great  establishment,  Heriot's  Hospital, 
of  the  improvements  of  his  own  invention  in  the  application  of 
tlTtfee  preparation  of  food. 

"  I  have  before  me  a  recent  letter  from  Mr.  Jackson,  one  of 
the  principal  guardians  of  the  hospital,  to  the  author  of  these 
improvements.  Here  is  a  literal  translation  [which  I  translate 
again  from  the  French]. 

"EDINBURGH,  July  21,  1801. 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR,  —  With  a  view  of  procuring  the  most  ex- 
act information  about  the  result  of  the  repairs  made  in  Heriot's 
Hospital,  I  have  preferred  to  allow  a  sufficient  length  of  time 
to  pass  that  their  value  might  be  sufficiently  tested.  To-day  I 
have  the  satisfaction  to  inform  you  that  a  trial  of  six  months  has 
proved  with  certainty  that  the  same  operations  are  performed 
with  only  a  sixth  part  of  the  fuel  which  was  used  before.  The 
saving  will  nevertheless  be  only  two  thirds,  because  the  price 
of  coke  is  nearly  double  that  of  the  fuel  which  we  used  before. 
I  assure  you,  with  much  pleasure,  that  the  food  is  prepared 
better  than  before,  and  with  half  the  trouble  to  the  servants. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  447 

In  a  word,  I  cannot  express  the  facility,  the  convenience,  and 
the  economy  which  attach  to  the  improvements  introduced  into 
the  hospital  under  your  directions.  The  kitchen,  the  laundry, 
and  the  drying-room  are  so  perfectly  arranged,  that,  in  my  humble 
opinion,  it  would  be  impossible  to  add  to  their  advantages. 

u  The  Lord  Provost  and  the  magistrates  join  me  in  their 
thanks,  &c. 

"JAMES.  JACKSON. 

"  The  guardians  wished  to  signify  their  gratitude  by  a  token 
more  durable  than  that  of  a  simple  letter.  They  therefore  sent 
to  the  Count  a  silver  casket  bearing  an  inscription  very  honora- 
ble for  him,  and  upon  one  of  its  faces  is  represented  in  a  massive 
gold  relief  the  principal  facade  of  the  building,  to  the  improve- 
ment of  which  he  had  so  efficiently  contributed,  and  the  gift  is 
besides  a  beautiful  architectural  fancy. 

"  Finally,  he  has  crowned  his  work  by  the  superb  establish- 
ment of  the  Royal  Institution,  of  which  he  was  the  principal 
promoter,  and  which  I  described  to  you  on  my  arrival.  It  is 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  monuments  of  his  patriotism  and 
of  his  ingenious  activity.  This  enterprise  advances  rapidly  to 
perfection,  and  he  devotes  to  it  his  most  assiduous  pains. 

"  Happy,  however,  as  he  might  be,  and  usefully  employed  in 
England,  he  is  not  permanently  fixed  here.  The  same  sov- 
ereign who,  in  1784,  had  divined  what  a  blessing  such  a  man  as 
the  Count  might  be  to  his  nation,  signified  a  very  emphatic 
intention  of  calling  him  back  to  him.  With  difficulty  could  he 
withstand  the  appeal  of  a  Prince  who  sought  the  good  of  his 
country  in  attaching  to  himself  a  man  whom  he  regarded  as  best 
able  to  aid  him  in  his  proposed  reforms.  I  think  that  the 
next  spring,  or  a  little  later,  he  left  his  quiet  residence  to  re- 
sume for  some  time  the  high  functions  in  which  he  had  ren- 
dered such  eminent  services  in  Bavaria. 

"  Such,  my  friends,  is  a  resume  of  my  notes.  It  will  but 
partially  satisfy  your  curiosity,  and  I  am  perplexed  by  my  desire 
to  tell  you  what  I  think  will  interest  you,  and  the  fear  of  being 
indiscreet  in  my  communications." 


448  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

It  is  observable  that  Pictet  has  no  knowledge  of,  or, 
at  least,  makes  no  reference  to,  any  breach  of  the  most 
cordial  relations  between  Rumford  and  his  associates. 
He  sent  with  the  letter  to  his  co-editors  an  engraved 
portrait  of  Rumford,  which  appears  with  it  in  the 
Bibliotheque  Britannique,  and  gives  also  a  list  of  the 
Count's  papers  published  in  the  Philosophical  Trans- 
actions for  1781,  1786,  1787,  1792,  1795,  1796,  1797, 
1798,  and  1799.  ^e  likewise  says  that  Rumford's 
Essays  have  been  translated  into  French,  German,  and 
Italian.  In  the  preface  to  Vol.  XXXIV.  of  the  Bib- 
liotheque the  editors  claim  that  their  work  has  been 
the  medium  of  making  known  through  France  the  illus- 
trious career  and  the  philanthropic  labors  of  Rumford. 

The  embargo  still  continuing  and  making  intercourse 
with  the  Continent  from  England  difficult  for  travellers, 
PictelT^rites  a  second  letter,  dated  from  Brompton 
Row,  September  i,  1801,  in  which  he  expresses  him- 
self very  warmly  as  to  the  enjoyment  he  is  finding  as  a 
household  guest  of  Rumford,  though  he  is  anxious  to 
return  home. 

A  third  letter  from  Pictet*  informs  his  fellow-editors 
and  us,  that,  notwithstanding  the  embargo,  the  Count, 
disposed  to  pass  some  time  at  Munich,  has  obtained  a 
passport  for  himself  by  way  of  Dover,  and  has  done 
him  the  great  favor  of  procuring  for  him  the  privilege 
of  accompanying  him.  Such  indulgence  had  not  been 
granted  for  a  long  time.  Their  departure  is  fixed  for 
the  2oth  of  September.  The  friends  are  to  separate  for 
their  different  routes  at  Calais. 

Pictet  writes  that  he  has  been  in  England  three 
months,  and  that  the  visit  has  been  the  happiest  inci- 

*  Bibliothfeque  Britannique,  Vol.  XXL 


Life  of  Count  Rztmford.  449 

dent  in  his  life.  Besides  visiting  with  the  Count  the 
famous  brewery  of  Meux,  they  had  made  together  a 
short  tour  as  an-  excursion  to  Woburn  Abbey,  the 
estate  of  the  Duke  of  Bedford.  They  had  examined  by 
the  way  many  manufactories  and  other  interesting  ob- 
jects. The  writer  describes  the  Duke's  estate  and 
farms.  The  friends  spent  two  days  with  Sir  John 
Sebright,  a  warm  admirer  of  Rumford,  where  a  great 
fete  was  made  for  them,  and  where  they  enjoyed  a 
hunt. 

In  here  parting  company  with  Pictet,  to  whom  I 
have  been  so  much  indebted  for  confidential  informa- 
tion, though  it  has  needed  a  little  revision,  I  must 
express  my  obligations  to  him  for  the  results  of  his  ar- 
dent esteem  for  Count  Rumford,  and  must  claim  for  the 
Count  the  constant  regard  of  one  who  appears  to  have 
been  a  most  excellent  man  as  well  as  a  distinguished 
philosopher.  I  have  seen  a  profile  drawing  of  him, 
with  a  fine  amiable  countenance,  which  he  gave  to  the 
Countess  Sarah,  and  on  the  back  of  the  frame  of  which 
he  has  written,  <c  One  who  is  proud  to  call  himself  the 
friend  of  Count  Rumford." 

The  Count  was  abroad  from  September  20,  1801,  to 
January  19,  1802,  when  he  was  at  a  managers'  meeting 
of  the  Institution.  His  last  attendance  was  April  26, 
1802.  On  May  3,  1802,  he  signed  at  Brompton  a 
report  of  his  own  to  the  managers.  He  was  at  a  lec- 
ture of  Davy's  in  that  month.  On  May  7  or  8  he 
went  to  Paris,  where  he  remained  up  to  July  30.  On 
the  5th  of  August  he  writes  from  Munich.  On  De- 
cember 24,  he  writes  from  Mannheim,  and  hopes  to  be 
back  in  the  Royal  Institution  in  April  or  May.  Janu- 

*   It  is  now  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  J.  B.  Walker,  Concord,  N.  H. 
29 


450  Life  of  Count  Rzimford. 

ary  24,  1803,  he  was  at  Munich.  November  1 1  he 
was  in  Paris,  hoping  to  be  in  England  in  the  course  of 
the  winter.  July,  1804,  he  was  in  Paris,  with  the  ex- 
pectation of  occupying  his  house  at  Brompton  in  the 
winter.  May  i,  1805,  he  was  at  Munich,  more  than 
ever  uncertain  when  he  should  be  in  England  again. 
He  was  in  Paris  in  1807. 

But  this  is  anticipating  events  in  his  personal  ex- 
perience and  in  his  domestic  life  the  relation  of  which 
is  to  be  far  from  agreeable.  Before  rehearsing  these,  I 
must  again  make  a  brief  reference  to  the  philanthropic 
and  scientific  labors  of  Count  Rumford,  as  set  forth  in 
his  Essays. 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

Count  Rumford's  Fame  in  Bavaria,  Great  Britain,  and 
the  United  States.  —  Permanent  Results  of  his  Philan- 
thropy. —  Tribute  to  him  from  Dr.  A.  Joly.  —  His  In- 
stitutions' in  Bavaria.  —  His  Permanent  Influence  in 
England  and  the  United  States.  —  Continued  Economical 
and  Scientific  Experiments,  as  described  in  his  Essays.  — 
The  Propagation  of  Heat  in  Fluids :  and  in  various  Sub- 
stances. —  Inquiry  concerning  the  Source  of  the  Heat 
excited  by  Friction.  —  Rumford's  Claims  as  a  Discoverer. 
—  Depreciation  of  him  by  some  English  Authorities.  — 
Economical  Inventions.  —  Franklin  s  Fireplaces.  —  Rum- 
ford *s  Improvements.  —  Essay  on  the  Construction  of 
Kitchen  Fireplaces  and  Utensils.  —  Savory  Food.  —  A 
Chinese  Example.  —  Replies  to  Critics  and  Jesters.  — 
Appeal  to  the  Rich.  —  Pleasures  of  Benevolence.  —  Essay 
on  Open  Chimney  Fireplaces.  —  The  Count  ys  Name  at- 
tached to  other  than  his  own  Inventions.  —  Essay  on  the 
Salubrity  of  Warm  Rooms.  —  Essays  on  the  Management 
of  Fires  in  closed  Fireplaces,  and  on  the  Use  of  Steam  as  a 
Vehicle  for  transporting  Heat.  —  Encomiums  on  Rum- 
ford's  Benevolence  in  the  English  Parliament.  —  Cobbetf  s 
Satire.  —  Boston  follows  Rumfcrd's  Method. 

IAVARIA,  Great  Britain,  and  the  United  States  of. 
America  retain  permanent  memorials  of  the  phil- 
anthropic and  the  scientific  services  of  Count  Rumford. 
His  fame,  coupled   with  strong  claims   upon   the  grati- 
tude  of  large   numbers   of  each   successive   generation, 


452  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

might  be  considered  as  well  established  in  either  of 
those  countries.  But  we  must  recognize  a  distinction 
in  the  character  of  his  services  in  each  of  them,  as 
affecting  the  renewed  or  the  popular  remembrance  of 
him.  The  severest  and  the  most  protracted  labors 
which  he  performed  were  those  that  had  employed  him 
in  Bavaria,  where  he  had  spent  the  longest  period  of 
years  successively,  after  he  left  his .  native  country. 
And  his  work  'in  Bavaria  had  been  mainly  that  of 
benevolent  activity  in  instituting,  organizing,  and  over- 
seeing schemes  and  establishments  of  a  humane  and 
reformatory  character.  But  work  of  this  sort,  however 
effective  for  the  time,  and  however  conspicuous  in  its 
beneficence,  and  however  gratefully  appreciated,  has 
directly,  at  least,  but  a  temporary  and  local  influence. 
The  record  in  the  Count's  Essays  relating  to  it  may 
indeed,  by  the  help  of  the  press  and  by  commemo- 
rative tributes,  inspire  and  guide  successive  laborers  in 
the  fields  of  practical  benevolence,,  and  in  dealing  with 
new  phases  and  difficulties  of  the  permanent  problems 
and  evils  presented  by  poverty.  But  as  buildings  fall 
to  ruin  and  require  renewal,  and  as  cultivated  fields 
and  gardens  run  to  waste,  and  an  increasing  population 
multiplies  the  ranks  and  intensifies  the  mischiefs  and 
miseries  of  pauperism,  so  there  must  be  a  reconstruc- 
tion, through  new  adaptations,  of  the  theory  and  prac- 
tice of  beneficence  ;  while  those  who  labor  in  this  cause 
for  their  own  generation  must  consent  to  be  superseded, 
that  others  following  them  may  receive  their  just  trib- 
utes. Count  Rumford  is  by  no  means  forgotten  in 
Bavaria,  nor  have  the  institutions  which  he  so  zealously 
and  wisely  founded  and  put  into  operation  passed  under 
complete  decay,  or  fallen  into  oblivion.  Natives  and 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  453 

strangers  still  enjoy  their  promenades  in  his  English 
Garden.  The  Workhouse  and  the  Asylum  for  the 
poor  still  serve  their  original  uses.  Three  years  ago  a 
superb  bronze  statue  of  Rumford,  cast  in  the  famous 
foundry  of  the  city,  was  set  up  in  one  of  the  public 
squares  of  Munich.  Yet  none  the  less  is  it  true,  that, 
in  the  changing  of  generations  and  under  the  circum- 
stances of  social  life  in  a  populous  community,  while 
the  fame  of  a  philanthropist  may  be  historically  assured, 
the  practical  fruits  of  his  schemes  and  plans  and  labors 
may  not  be  apparent  or  seemingly  permanent. 

In  his  journeys  in  the  south  of  Europe,  Count  Rum- 
ford,  as  has  already  been  related,  even  while  wearied 
and  ill,  and  seeking  relief  and  rest,  incessantly  busied 
himself  in  the  service  of  the  charitable  and  reformatory 
institutions  of  the  cities  through  which  he  passed.  His 
friend  Pictet,  whom  he  had  known  by  correspondence 
before  they  personally  met,  had  taken  care  by  his  own 
pen  and  by  the  help  of  his  fellow-editors  and  correspond- 
ents, to  extend  the  fame  of  the  Count  both  for  benevo- 
lence and  for  science,  through  the  voluminous  pages  of 
the  Bibliotheque  Britannique.  I  have  translated  from 
those  pages  the  following  letter  from  Dr.  Joly,  as  a  happy 
recognition  of  the  eminent  esteem  which  Count  Rum- 
ford  had  secured  in  both- departments  of  his  activity. 

"ONNEX,  near  Geneva,  November  25,  1797. 

"GENTLEMEN,  —  Among  the  very  many  important  services 
for  which  we  are  indebted  to  your  excellent  journal,  there 
ought  especially  to  be  made  known  there  the  works  of  the 
Count  Rumford.  In  the  midst  of  a  war  which  has  suspended 
so  many  enterprises,  you  have  given  the  results  of  investigations 
and  experiments  which  it  would  seem  as  if  only  peace  could 
favor.  While  warriors,  have  been  establishing  their  fame  upon 


4*54  Life  of  Count  Rtimford: 

the  destruction  of  men,  you  have  recognized  only  that  which 
comes  from  labors  to  advance  their  welfare.  We  have  need 
of  this  consolation,  and  of  a  striking  illustration  of  it.  I  con- 
gratulate myself  at  having  seen  a  philanthropist  par  excellence. 
Although  you  have  already  given  an  account  of  his  seventh 
Essay,  you  are  far  from  realizing  the  immense  extent  of  his 
labors.  I  hope  that  he  will  not  delay  to  give  to  the  public  the 
interesting  detail  of  them. 

"  The  subject  with  which  Count  Rumford  as  a  physicist  is 
chiefly  engaged  is  the  Nature  and  Effects  of  Heat.  He  is  not 
only  indefatigable  in  his  researches,  but,  ardently  desirous  of 
gathering  a  large  co-operation  in  the  investigations  directed  to 
that  subject,  he  has  made,  as  you  will  see  in  the  volume  of 
Philosophical  Transactions  for  1797,  an  endowment  of  <£i,ooo 
sterling,  the  interest  of  which  is  to  be  devoted  to  rewarding  the 
authors  of  the  best  memoirs  on  this  subject,  to  be  adjudged  by 
the  Royal  Society  of  London.  He  has  established  a  similar 
endowment  in  the  United  States,  his  native  country.  He 
requires  that  all  in  both  countries  who  desire  to  co-operate  in 
this  study  shall  have  equal  privileges  in  whatever  language  the 
memoirs  may  be  written. 

"  It  is  not  necessary  to  be  a  savant  in  order  to  share  in  the 
favors  of  Count  Rumford.  Those  who  have  followed  hfs  prin- 
ciples in  the  construction  of  fireplaces  are  already  enjoying  the 
fruits  of  his  active  benevolence.  I  hope  we  shall  not  be  slow 
to  appreciate  the  whole  advantage  of  it  in  our  kitchen  furnaces 
where  the  fire  is  shut  in.  The  economy  of  combustibles  is  too 
important  for  us  in  our  local  circumstances  for  us  to  fail  of  giv- 
ing it  all  our  care. 

"  Count  Rumford  has  pursued  another  service  with  like 
marked  success.  He  has  become  the  father  of  the  indigent. 
His  establishment  for  the  poor  has  banished  mendicity  from 
Munich,  and  his  House  of  Industry  tends  to  the  absolute  pre- 
vention of  pauperism.  The  double  means  used  in  this  under- 
taking have  made  me  conceive,  that,  when  Benevolence  is  per- 
sonified, she  o'ught  to  wear  two  visages  ;  one  should  express  the 
gaze  of  pity,  with  the  hand  which  succors  the  wretched  ;  the 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  455 

other  should  express  the  pleasing  consciousness  in  imparting  a 
deserved  remuneration  as  a  substitute  for  alms.  The  Institu- 
tion once  had  two  thousand  poor  people  in  its  charge,  and  now 
has  fourteen  hundred.  The  House  of  Industry  contains  from 
twelve  to  fifteen  hundred  persons,  of  whom  several  hundreds 
have  there  for  the  first  time  learned  to  recognize  the  honorable 
employment  of  labor. 

"  It  is  impossible,  gentlemen,  to  tell  you  all  which  one  finds 
to  admire  about  this  excellent  man.  If  you  would  judge  how 
an  exquisite  taste  may  be  combined  with  a  most  delicate  sensi- 
bility to  make  our  fellow-creatures  happy  in  their  relaxations 
after  fatigue,  you  have  but  to  visit  the  English  Garden  at 
Munich.  Would  you  see  a  productive  activity  follow  a  waste- 
ful sterility  in  a  park,  you  have  but  to  examine  the  farm  of  that 
Garden,  or  the  Military  Garden,  or  the  Veterinary  School. 
These  establishments  are  as  honorable  to  the  Sovereign  who 
allowed  them  as  to  the  man  who  called  them  into  being. 
Would  you  conceive  the  method  of  reducing  to  order  the  most 
complicated  arrangements,  and  seizing  upon  the  results  from 
such  various  establishments,  and  inspecting  them  with  a  rapidity 
which  holds  you  as  by  enchantment,  just  take  the  trouble  to 
look  at  the  pictures  of  the  Military  Academy,  of  the  Institute, 
and  of  the  House  of  Industry,  and  at  the  originals  of  those 
pictures.  Would  you  then  have  the  least  misgiving  of  the  ex- 
periments and  the  success  of  Count  Rumford,  of  which  you 
have  given  an  account  ? 

"  But  one  must  hurry  to  go  to  Munich  to  do  justice,  after  a 
thorough  inspection,  to  the  candor  and  the  scrupulous  exactness 
of  the  author  of  these  Essays. 

"  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  &c., 

«  A.  JOLY,  D.  M."  ' 


While  the  Count  had  been  publishing  his  Essays  in 
England,  he  had  sent  copies  of  the  advanced  sheets  to 
his  friend  F.  I.  Hertuch  in  Weimar,  who  with  the 
author's  knowledge  and  approbation,  and  with  help 


456  Life  of  Coimt  Rinnford. 

from  others,  was  to  translate  them  into  German  for  as 
early  publication  as  possible.  The  translator  had  .pre- 
viously made  a  compilation  from  the  writings  of  Frank- 
lin, for  which  he  says  he  thought  those  of  Rumford  "a 
worthy  pendant."  The  Preface  to  his  first  edition  was 
dated  at  Weimar,  where  the  translation  was  published, 
June  1 6,  1797.  The  fourth  edition  of  this  translation 
appeared  in  1806.  The  subjects,  especially  those  of  re- 
form and  benevolence,  to  which  public  attention  and 
the  enthusiasm  of  more  generous  spirits  were  engaged 
by  those  Essays,  were  then  comparatively  novel.  They 
were  presented  by  the  Count  almost  equally  as  pressing 
obligations  of  duty  and  as  offering  pure  and  happy 
satisfactions  for  those  who  would  labor  to  advance 
them.  Experience  proved  that  his  institutions  in  Bava- 
ria, however  wisely  planned,  and  even  however  gene- 
rously supported  by  government  patronage  and  by 
money,  needed  the  watchful  and  zealous  oversight  of 
a  disinterested  and  well-sustained  superintendent,  — 
needed,  in  fact,  a  succession  of  Count  Rumfords.  He 
found  on  the  transient  visits  which  he  made  to  Munich, 
after  his  rejection  by  the  English  government  as  the 
Minister  of  Bavaria,  that  these  institutions  certainly 
were  not  increasingly  prosperous.  To  a  moderate  ex- 
tent he  might,  indeed,  take  for  granted  that  a  few  years 
of  their  effective  working  would  be  corrective  or  reme- 
dial of  the  gigantic  evils  of  mendicity  and  pauperism  in 
Bavaria,  and  therefore  that,  so  far  as  the  decline  of  the 
institutions  signified  that  they  had  answered  their  pur- 
pose, there  was  really  no  occasion  for  regret. 

We  have  seen,  too,  how  largely  and  earnestly  the 
Count  devoted  himself  in  Great  Britain  to  schemes  of 
pure  benevolence,  in  which  his  scientific  interest  and 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  457 

skill  were  engaged  simply  to  originate  or  perfect  his 
most  utilitarian  practical  objects.  Of  tne  results  of 
many  of  his  economical  projects  and  inventions  we 
must  also  admit  the  same  qualification.  The  inge- 
nuity of  an  inventive  and  thrifty  people  would  be  sure 
to  introduce  a  succession  of  improvements  in  all  the 
details  and  utensils  of  household  economy.  Still,  be- 
sides having  done  more  than  any  one  who  preceded 
him  in  drawing  general  attention  to  the  evils  and  waste 
in  connection  with  the  use  of  fuel  and  the  culinary  art, 
it  is  undoubtedly  true,  that,  in  so  far  as  the  philosoph- 
ical and  utilitarian  principles  which  he  advocated  and 
demonstrated  have  failed  of  practical  regard  since  his 
own  time,  Count  Rumford's  memory  and  advice  might 
be  profitably  revived  for  the  benefit  of  the  third  genera- 
tion after  his  own.  In  the  pages  of  a  literary  periodical 
published  but  a  few  years  ago  in  London,  it  was  grate- 
ful to  meet  the  following  sentences  :  "  That  untiring 
worker,  Count  Rumford,  c  one  of  the  worthiest  of 
England's  sons/  though  an  American  born  and  bred, 
wrought  an  immense  change  in  the  construction  of 
grates.  This  was  fifty  [seventy]  years  ago ;  yet  the 
generality  of  our  fireplaces  are  as  he  left  them,  without 
many  of  the  improvements  suggested  by  the  Count. 
The  chief  of  these  is  the  unsparing  use  of  fire-clay." 

Having  attempted,  by  such  a  particular  narration  in 
preceding  pages,  to  set  forth  the  documentary  history 
of  the  endowments  in  England  and  America,  and  of  the 
Institution  in  London  by  which  Count  Rumford  has 
secured  a  permanent  and  renewed  public  fame,  and 
reserving  for  subsequent  mention  the  establishment 
by  him  of  a  scientific  professorship  in  the  oldest  seat  of 

*  London  Reader  for  1865,  Vol.  II.  p.  428. 


458  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

learning  in  America,  I  may  devote  this  chapter  to  a 
sketch  of  some  of  his  miscellaneous  labors  as  described 
in  his  Essays. 

After  much  time  and  study,  through  one  whole  series 
of  experiments,  given  to  the  subject  of  the  best  con- 
struction of  kitchen  fireplaces  and  utensils,  the  Count 
instituted  a  second  course  of 'experiments,  with  a  view 
to  contrive  closed  fireplaces  to  serve  instead  of  fixed 
fireplaces  for  cooking  on  a  small  scale.  These  he  knew 
would  be  extremely  useful  to  the  families  of  the  poor, 
who  cook  in  the  rooms  where  they  live ;  while  even  the 
opulent  would  be  glad  to  -have  them  in  their  houses. 
He  had  in  view  another  object  of  great  importance, 
namely,  the  making  of  "sauce-pans  and  other  kitchen 
utensils  constructed  of  porcelain  and  of  earthenware, 
instead  of  those  now  in  common  use,  which  are  mostly 
of  copper,  by  which  the  deleterious  effects  of  that 
poisonous  metal  may  be  avoided.'* 

He  had  himself  set  up  a  large  kitchen  in  the  Veteri- 
nary College  in  his  English  Garden  at  Munich,  in  the 
construction  of  which  not  a  particle  of  any  kind  of 
metal  was  employed,  earthenware  being  the  substitute. 
And  he  caused  to  be  prepared  for  his  own  house  such 
utensils  "made  of  white  porcelain,  very  thin,  free  from 
all  sharp  edges,  and  covered  on  the  outside  with  thin 
sheet-iron,  to  prevent  the  effects  of  a  too  sudden  appli- 
cation of  heat." 

In  his  Essay  upon  the  Propagation  of  Heat  in 
Fluids,  the  Count  starts  with  the  admirable  caution,  — 
the  consequences  of  the  neglect  of  which  he  had  had  to 
lament  in  many  of  his  earlier  researches, — that  "there 
is  nothing  more  dangerous  in  philosophical  investiga- 
tions than  to  take  anything  for  granted,  however  uh- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  459 

questionable  it  may  appear,  till  it  has  been  proved  by 
direct  and  decisive  experiment."  Thus,  he  had  taken 
for  granted,  as  apparently  everybody  had  done,  "  that 
heat  had  a  free  passage  in  all  directions,  through  all 
kinds  of  bodies/'  But  this  assumption  alike  of  the 
learned  and  the  unlearned,  and  which,  to  his  knowledge, 
had  never  been  called  in  question,  is  erroneous.  To 
this  mistaken  belief  he  attributes  cc  the  little  progress 
that  has  been  made  in  the  investigation  of  the  science 
of  heat,  —  a  science  assuredly  of  the  utmost  importance 
to  mankind."  He  began  his  own  experiments  on  the 
subject  under  that  delusion,  and  only  an  accidental  dis- 
covery convinced  him  of  his  error,  and  led  him  to 
recognize  first  that  air  is  a  non-conductor  of  heat ;  and 
even  then  he  had  been  so  blinded  by  his  prepossession 
as  not  at  once  to  recognize  the  most  evident  proof  that 
liquids  also  would  not  admit  of  the  free  passage  of  heat 
in  all  directions  through  them.  Having  in  a  previous 
Essay  announced  his  discovery  that  steam  and  flame  are 
non-conductors  of  heat,  he  proceeds  to  describe  the  ex- 
periments which  proved  to  him  that  "  although  the 
particles  of  any  fluid  individually  can  receive  heat  from 
other  bodies  or  communicate  it  to  them,  yet  among 
these  particles  themselves  all  interchange  and  communica- 
tion of  heat  is  absolutely  impossible." 

The  Count  had  often  burned  his  own  mouth,  and  seen 
other  persons  burn  theirs,  while  eating  at  dinner  of  a  dish 
much  used  in  England,  namely,  apple-pies,  or  apples 
and  almonds  mixed.  Apples  thus  cooked  retained  their 
heat  for  a  surprising  length  of  time.  Why  was  it  so  ? 
There  was  also  a  great  difference  in  this  respect  between 
several  other  cooked  foods.  The  philosopher  tried  to 
account  to  himself  for  the  fact  which  had  engaged  his 


460  Life  of  Count  Rinnford. 

attention  on  his  first  residence  in  England.  The  ques- 
tion came  back  to  him  with  new  force  many  years  after- 
wards in  connection  with  the  following  incident.  His 
dinner,  a  bowl  of  thick  rice  soup,  having  been  brought 
in  to  him  one  day  when  he  was  very  busy,  he  ordered  it 
set  upon  the  stove,  that  it  might  not  grow  cold.  The 
soup  was  hot,  and  the  stove  was  probably  cool  at  the 
moment,  though  fresh  fuel  was  soon  put  in.  When  the 
Count  was  at  leisure,  feeling  very  hungry,  he  turned  to 
his  soup  and  taking  a  spoonful  from  near  the  sur- 
face, found  it  cold  and  thick.  Putting  the  spoon  in 
deeper  the  second  time,  he  burned  his  mouth.  Why 
was  this  so  ?  Some  phenomena  which  he  observed 
when  at  Naples,  in  1794,  he  visited  the  hot  springs  at 
Baia,  also  engaged  his  interest  in  the  same  direction,  and 
even,  he  says,  "  astonished  "  him.  . 

"  Standing  on  the  sea-shore,  near  the  baths,  where  the  hot 
steam  was  issuing  out  of  every  crevice  of  the  rocks,  and  even 
rising  up  out  of  the  ground,  I  had  the  curiosity  to  put  my  hand 
into  the  water.  As  the  waves  which  came  in  from  the  sea 
followed  each  other  without  intermission,  and  broke  over  the 
even  surface  of  the  beach,  I  was  not  surprised  to  find  the  water 
cold  ;  but  I  was  more  than  surprised,  when,  on  running  the 
ends  of  my  fingers  through  the  cold  water  into  the  sand,  I 
found  the  heat  so  intolerable  that  I  was  obliged  instantly  to 
remove  my  hand.  The  sand  was  perfectly  wet,  and  yet  the 
temperature  was  so  very  different  at  the  small  distance  of  two 
or  three  inches  !  I  could  not  reconcile  this  with  the  supposed 
great  conducting  power  of  water.  I  even  found  that  the  top  of 
the  sand  was,  to  all  appearance,  quite  as  cold  as  the  water 
which  flowed  over  it ;  and  this  increased  my  astonishment  still 
more.  I  then,  for  the  first  time,  began  to  doubt  of  the  con-  • 
ducting  power  of  water,  and  resolved  to  set  about  making  ex- 
periments to  ascertain  the  facts." 


Life  of  Co^tnt  Rutnford.  461 

He,  however,  deferred  these  experiments  till  another 
incident,  two  years  subsequently,  freshened  his  curiosity. 
While  experimenting  on  the  communication  of  heat,  he 
had  prepared  several  thermometers  of  an  uncommon 
size,  their  globular  bulbs  being  above  four  inches  in 
diameter.  These  he  had  filled  with  various  kinds  of 
liquids.  One  of  them  containing  spirits  of  wine,  poured 
in  as  hot  as  the  glass  tube  would  endure,  he  placed  .to 
cool  in  a  window  where  the  sun  was  shining.  The 
divisions  on  the  tube  were  marked  by  a  diamond  on  the 
glass.  The  bulb,  which  was  of  copper,  having  been  laid 
aside  for  two  years,  and  its  orifice  not  being  filled  with  a 
stopple,  some  fine  particles  of  dust  had  found  their  way 
into  it.  These  particles,  intimately  mixed  with  the 
spirits  of  wine,  helped  to  show  the  whole  mass  of  liquid 
through  the  thin,  transparent,  colorless  glass  of  the 
tube,  in  a  most  rapid  motion,  running  swiftly  in  two 
opposite  directions,  up  and  down,  at  the  same  time. 
On  examining  the  instrument  with  a  lens,  the  Count 
observed  that  the  ascending  current  occupied  the  axis  of 
the  tube,  while  the  descending  current  followed  its  sides. 
When  the  tube  was  inclined,  the  rising  current  moved 
out  of  the  axis  and  occupied  the  uppermost  side,  the 
descending  current  making  use  of  the  lower  side.  When 
the  cooling  of  the  spirits  of  wine  was  hastened  by  wet- 
ting the  tube  with  ice-cold  water,  the  velocities  of  both 
currents  were  accelerated ;  and  the  motion  ceased  when 
the  instrument  and  its  contents  had  acquired  nearly  the 
temperature  of  the  air  of  the  room.  The  motion  was 
prolonged  by  wrapping  the  bulb  of  the  thermometer  in 
furs,  or  any  warm  covering.  The  appearances  were  the 
same  when  the  experiment  was  tried  with  a  similar  ther- 
mometer filled  with  linseed  oil.  The  observer  at  once 


462  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

became  persuaded  that  the  motion  of  these  liquids  was 
occasioned  by  their  particles  going  individually  and  in  suc- 
cession to  give  off  their  heat  to  the  cold  side  of  the  tube, 
and  he  set  himself  to  contrive  experiments  to  prove 
beyond  all  doubt  that  these  and  probably  all  other 
liquids  are,  in  fact,  non-conductors  of  heat.  He  inferred 
that  if  heat  is  propagated  in  liquids  only  in  consequence 
of.  the  internal  motions  of  their  particles,  then  every- 
thing which  tends  to  obstruct  those  motions  ought  cer- 
tainly to  retard  the  operation,  and  render  the  propaga- 
tion of  heat  slower  and  more  difficult.  It  was  his  object 
to  verify  this  inference.  He  contrived,  therefore,  to 
make  a  certain  quantity  of  heat  pass  through  a  certain 
quantity,  first,  of  pure  water,  confined  in  a  certain  tube ; 
and  then,  repeating  the  experiment  with  the  same  appa- 
ratus, instead  of  using  pure  water,  he  mixed  with  it  a 
small  quantity  of  eider-down,  which,  without  altering 
the  chemical  properties  of  the  water  or  impairing  its 
fluidity,  served  merely  to  embarrass  the  motions  of  the 
particles  of  the  water  in  transporting  the  heat.  The 
Count  gives  a  very  minute  description  of  his  apparatus, 
and  of  the  method  of  his  experiments.  Remembering 
his  experience  in  eating  hot  apple-pies,  he  determined 
to  test  whether  apples,  which  he  knew  were  composed 
almost  entirely  of  water,  really  possess  a  greater  power 
of  retaining  heat  than  does  pure  water.  He  reduced  a 
quantity  of  stewed  apples,  by  washing  and  soaking,  to 
a  fibrous  remainder,  which  proved  to  be  less  than  one 
fiftieth  part  of  the  whole  mass,  showing  that  more  than 
forty-nine  fiftieths  of  an  apple  is  little  else  than  pure 
water.  The  experiment  proved  that  the  conducting 
power  of  water,  with  regard  to  heat,  was  impaired  when 
the  bulb  of  his  thermometer  was  surrounded  with  a 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  463 

quantity  of  stewed  apples.  He  illustrates  his  experi- 
ments by  tables.  The  results  showed  that  heat  is 
propagated  in  fluids  by  the  transporting  of  their  par- 
ticles, which  are  put  in  motion  by  the  change  pro- 
duced in  their  specific  gravity  by  the  change  of  tempera- 
ture, and  that  there  is  no  interchange  of  their  heat  among 
the  particles  of  the  same  fluid. 

Finding  that  the  propagation  of  heat  in  fluids  might 
be  obstructed  both  by  diminishing  their  fluidity  and 
by  obstructing  the  motion  of  their  particles,  the  Count 
next  engaged  in  experiments  to  test  the  comparative 
effects  of  these  two  causes,  permitting  only  one  of  them 
to  act  at  the  time  of  each  trial.  To  ascertain  the  effects 
produced  by  diminishing  the  fluidity  of  water,  he  boiled 
with  it  a  small  quantity  of  starch  ;  and  to  determine  the 
effects  produced  by  merely  embarrassing  the  water  in  its 
motions,  he  mixed  with  it  the  same  proportion  of  eider- 
down as  before  of  starch.  The  results  he  compares  in 
tables  with  his  experiments  made  with  pure  water,  and 
with  water  infused  with  baked  apples,  to  show  the  differ- 
ent measurements  of  time  consumed  by  the  heat  in 
passing  into  the  thermometer. 

The  Count  concluded  that  he  had  thus  proved,  almost 
to  a  demonstration,  that  heat  is  propagated  in  water  in 
consequence  of  its  internal  motions  ;  that  is,  that  it  is 
transported  or  carried  by  the  particles  of  that  liquid, 
and  that  it  does  not  spread  or  expand  in  it  as  had  gen- 
erally been  imagined.  He  had  thus  proved  concerning 
water  the  same  scientific  fact  which  he  had  announced  in 
a  paper  published  in  the  Philosophical  Transactions,  in 
1792,  concerning  the  propagation  of  heat  in  air.  'The 
conducting  power  of  water  was  found  to  be  nearly,  if 
not  'quite,  as  much  impaired  by  the  mixture  of  eider- 


464  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

down  as  was  that  of  air,  though  the  mixture  does  not 
affect  the  specific  qualities  of  either  of  the  fluids,  and 
merely  embarrasses  their  internal  motions."  He  then 
proceeded  to  connect  these  experiments  with  those 
which  he  had  made  on  the  various  substances  used  in 
forming  artificial  clothing  for  confining  heat.  The 
Count  follows  the  results  he  had  obtained  as  guides  in 
tracing  out  the  tokens  <c  of  the  wisdom  of  the  Creator 
of  the  world  "  in  the  provisions  made  in  the  animal 
and  vegetable  kingdoms  for  preserving  the  life  of 
plants  and  living  creatures,  according  to  the  proportion 
of  fluids  and  solids  in  them,  and  the  risk  of  congela- 
tion. An  illustration  of  these  provisions  he  finds  in  the 
fact  that  the  sap  of  all  trees  which  are  capable  of  sup- 
porting a  long  continuance  of  frost  grows  thick  and 
viscous  on  the  approach  of  the  winter.  To  this  in- 
creased viscosity  of  the  sap  in  winter  are  to  be  added 
the  extreme  smallness  of  the  vessels  through  which  the 
sap  moves  in  vegetables  and  in  large  trees,  the  fact  that 
thq  substance  of  these  small  tubes  is  one  of  the  best  non- 
conductors of  heat,  and  also  the  protection  furnished 
by  a  thick  covering  of  bark.  He  thus  accounts  for  the 
preservation  of  the  life  of  trees  through  a  long  and  hard 
winter.  The  Count  had  observed  the  extreme  dif- 
ficulty with  which  heat  passes  into  wood,  when  he 
noticed  in  his  foundry,  at  Munich,  that  the  fireman 
stirred  the  melted  metal  with  a  wooden  instrument, 
which  was  found  not  to  be  affected  through  even  one 
twentieth  of  an  inch  within  its  surface  by  the  glowing 
fire.  The  less  watery  fruits  are,  the  longer  will  they 
bear  the  cold  without  freezing. 

The  Count  next  devised  a  more  elaborate  mechanical 
contrivance  for  investigating  the  internal  motions  among 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  465 

the  particles  of  liquids  as  they  are  heated  or  cooled.  He 
demonstrated  that  heat  cannot  be  propagated  down- 
wards in  liquids  as  long  as  they  continue  to  be  con- 
densed by  cold,  —  "  that  ice  would  take  more  than 
eighty  times  as  long  to  melt  when  boiling  water  stood 
on  its  surface  as  it  would  take  if  allowed  to  swim 
on  the  top  of  the  hot  water ;  and  that  water  at  the 
temperature  of  41°  would  melt  even  more  ice,  when 
standing  on  its  surface,  than  boiling  water."  The 
proof  was  thus  complete  that  water  is  almost  a  perfect 
non-conductor  of  heat.  The  experiments  with  these 
results  were  chiefly  made  in  March,  1797.  The  Count 
adds  to  his  conclusion,  at  this  point,  the  following  ob- 
servation :  — 

"  The  insight  which  this  discovery  gives  us  in  regard  to  the 
nature  of  the  mechanical  process  which  takes  place  in  chemi- 
cal solutions  is  too  evident  to  require  illustration ;  and  it 
appears  to  me  that  it  will  enable  us  to  account  in  a  satisfac- 
tory manner  for  all  the  various  phenomena  of  chemical  affini- 
ties and  vegetation.  Perhaps  all  the  motions  among  inanimate 
bodies  on  the  surface  of  the  globe  may  be  traced  to  the  same 
cause,  namely,  to  the  non-conducting  power  of  Fluids,  with 
regard  to  Heat." 

Pursuing  his  investigations,  the  Count  recognizes  the 
fact  that  as  the  motions  in  a  liquid,  when  undergoing  a 
change  of  temperature,  are  caused  by  a  change  in  the 
specific  gravity  of  those  particles  of  the  liquid  which 
become  either  hotter  or  colder  than  the  rest  of  the  mass, 
there  will  be  a  difference  in  the  conducting  power  of  the 
liquids,  according  as  their  respective  specific  gravities  are 
more  or  less  changed  by  any- given  change  of  tempera- 
ture. The  less,  then,  that  the  specific  gravity  of  a  liquid 
is  changed  by  any  given  change  of  temperature,  the 
30 


466  Life  of  Coztnt  Rumford. 

more  sluggish  will  be  the  communication  of  heat  through 
its  particles. 

"  Let  us  stop  here,"  adds  the  Count,  "  for  one  moment,  just 
to  ask  ourselves  a  very  interesting  question.  Suppose  that  in 
the  general  arrangement  of  things  it  had  been  necessary  to  con- 
trive matters  so  that  water  should  not  freeze  in  winter,  or  that 
it  should  not  freeze  but  with  the  greatest  difficulty,  very  slowly, 
and  in  the  smallest  quantity  possible.  How  could  this  have  been 
most  readily  effected  ? 

"  Those  who  are  acquainted  with  the  law  of  the  condensa- 
tion of  water  on  parting  with  its  Heat  have  already  anticipated 
me  in  these  speculations  ;  and  it  does  not  appear  to  me  that 
there  is  anything  which  human  sagacity  can  fathom,  within  the 
wide-extended  bounds  of  the  visible  creation,  which  affords  a 
more  striking  or  more  palpable  proof  of  the  wisdom  of  the 
Creator,  and  of  the  special  care  he  has  taken  in  the  general 
arrangement  of  the  universe  to  preserve  animal  life,  than  this 
wonderful  contrivance  ;  for  though  the  extensiveness  and  im- 
mutability of  the  general  laws  of  Nature  impress  our  minds 
with  awe  and  reverence  for  the  Creator  of  the  universe,  yet 
exceptions  to  those  laws,  or  particular  modifications  of  them,  from 
which  we  are  able  to  trace  effects  evidently  salutary  or  advan- 
tageous to  ourselves  and  our  fellow-creatures,  afford  still  more 
striking  proofs  of  contrivance,  and  ought  certainly  to  awaken  in 
us  the  most  lively  sentiments  of  admiration,  love,  and  gratitude. 

"  Though  in  temperatures  above  blood  heat  the  expansion  of 
water  with  Heat  is  very  considerable,  yet  in  the  neighborhood 
of  the  freezing  point  it  is  almost  nothing.  And  what  is  still 
more  remarkable,  as  it  is  an  exception  to  one  of  the  most  gen- 
eral laws  of  Nature  with  which  we  are  acquainted,  when  in 
cooling  it  comes  within  eight  or  nine  degrees,  on  Fahrenheit's 
scale,  of  the  freezing  point,  instead  of  going  on  to  be  farther 
condensed  as  it  loses  more  of  its  Heat,  it  actually  expands  as  it 
grows  colder,  and  continues  to  expand  more  and  more  as  it  is 

more  cooled The  difference  between  the  laws  of  the 

condensation  of  pure  water,  and  of  the  same  fluid  when  it  holds 


Life  of  Cowit  Rumford.  467 

in  solution  a  portion  of  salt,  is  striking.  But  when  we  trace  the 
effects  which  are  produced  in  the  world  by  that  arrangement,  we 
shall  be  lost  in  wonder  and  admiration." 

The  Count  then  begs  the  indulgence  and  candor  of 
his  readers  as  he  pursues  the  investigation  of  this  sub- 
ject, and  risks  the  danger  "  to  which  a  mortal  exposes 
himself  who  has  the  temerity  to  undertake  to  explain 
the  designs  of  Infinite  Wisdom."  He  says,  that  in 
contemplating  the  simplicity  of  the  means  employed  by 
the  Creator  to  produce  the  changes  of  the  seasons,  with 
all  the  blessings  accruing  from  them,  and  the  effects 
produced  by  the  various  modifications  of  the  active 
powers  which  we  perceive,  "we  shall  be  disposed  to 
admire,  adore,  and  love  that  great  First  Cause  which 
brought  all  things  into  existence."  Besides  that  me- 
chanical contrivance,  the  inclination  of  the  axis  of  the 
earth  to  the  plane  of  the  ecliptic, — the  simple  but 
stupendous  means  which  causes  the  changes  of  the 
seasons,  —  other  agencies  are  engaged  in  producing  the 
gradual  changes  of  temperature  necessary  to  the  growth 
and  perfection  of  most  vegetables.  These  agencies  are 
required  to  moderate  and  equalize  the  heat  of  the  sun 
in  the  extremes  of  the  seasons.  Among  these  agencies 
the  principal  is  water,  acted  upon  by  the  remarkable 
law  which  causes  its  condensation  by  cold. 

"  Had  not  Providence  interfered  in  a  manner  which  may  well 
be  considered  as  miraculous^  all  the  fresh  water  within  the  polar 
circle  must  inevitably  have  been  frozen  to  a  very  great  depth  in 
one  winter,  and  every  plant  and  tree  destroyed  ;  and  it  is  more 
than  probable  that  the  regions  of  eternal  frost  would  have  spread 
on  every  side  from  the  poles,  and,  advancing  towards  the  equa- 
tor, would  have  extended  its  dreary  and  solitary  reign  over  a 
great  part  of  what  are  now  the  most  fertile  and  most  inhabited 


468  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

climates  of  the  world Let  us  with  becoming  diffidence 

and  awe  endeavour  to  see  what  the  means  are  which  have  been 
employed  by  an  almighty  and  benevolent  God  to  protect  his  fair 
creation." 

It  was  absolutely  necessary  that  a  great  quantity  of 
living  water  should  be  preserved  in  a  fluid  state  in 
winter  as  well  as  in  summer.  Water  must  therefore 
be  prevented  from  parting  with  its  heat  in  a  cold  at- 
mosphere. Liquids  part  with  their  heat  only  in  conse- 
quence of  their  internal  motions,  and  proportionately  to 
the  rapidity  of  those  motions,  which  are  produced  by 
changes  in  the  specific  gravity  of  a  liquid,  induced  by 
a  change  of  temperature.  Now  it  has  been  proved  that 
the  peculiarity  of  water  is  that  the  change  in  its  specific 
gravity  induced  by  any  given  change  in  temperature  is 
very  small ;  and,  when  water  is  cooled  to  within  seven 
or  eight  degrees  of  the  freezing  point,  it  not  only  ceases 
to  be  further  condensed,  but  actually  begins  to  expand, 
and  continues  increasingly  to  do  so  as  long  as  it  can 
be  kept  fluid.  And  when  water  is  changed  to  ice  it 
expands  even  still  more,  and  the  ice  floats  on  the  surface 
of  the  uncongealed  part  of  the  fluid.  The  consequence 
is  that  the  tendency  of  water  to  cooling  by  mere  con- 
duction when  exposed  to  a  cold  atmosphere  is  thus 
retarded.  The  Count  then  proceeds  to  trace  the  opera- 
tion of  the  principle  which  he  has  thus  described,  in 
effecting,  as  a  result,  that  when  the  upper  surface  of  a 
lake,  for  instance,  is  covered  with  ice  and  snow,  the 
mass  of  water  below  loses  no  part  of  its  heat,  but 
rather  increases  it.  He  then  passes  to  a  very  lucid 
and  eloquent  exposition  of  the  beneficent  agency  of 
the  oceans  of  salt  water  under  the  operation  of  the  laws 
he  has  investigated.  It  is  but  just  that  the  "devout 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  469 

philosopher's  "  conclusion  should  be  given  in  his  own 
words. 

"  If,  among  barbarous  nations,  the  fear  of  a  God  and  the 
practice  of  religious  duties  tend  to  soften  savage  dispositions 
and  to  prepare  the  mind  for  all  those  sweet  enjoyments  which 
result  from  peace,  order,  industry,  and  friendly  intercourse, 
a  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  Supreme  Intelligence,  who  rules  and 
governs  the  universe  with  wisdom  and  goodness,  is  not  less 
essential  to  the  happiness  of  those  who,  by  cultivating  their 
mental  powers,  HAVE  LEARNED  TO  KNOW  HOW  LITTLE  CAN  BE 
KNOWN." 

In  continuing  the  subject  of  this  Essay  in  a  second 
part,  Count  Rumford  gives  "  An  Account  of  several 
New  Experiments,  with  occasional  Remarks  and  Obser- 
vations, and  Conjectures  respecting  Chemical  Affinity 
and  Solution,  and  the  Mechanical  Principle  of  Animal 
Life." 

The  Count  had  sent  a  manuscript  copy  of  the  first 
part  of  this  Essay  to  his  friend  Pictet  at  Geneva,  who 
translated  and  published  it.  To  a  letter  of  acknowl- 
edgment from  Pictet,  the  Count  had  replied  in  a  letter 
dated  June  9,  1797,  which  he  designed  simply  as  a 
private  one,  and  which  Pictet  inadvertently  put  in  print. 
It  contained  the  following  sentences:  "I  should  have 
been  much  surprised  if  my  Seventh  Essay  had  not 
interested  you,  for  in  my  life  I  never  felt  pleasure  equal 
to  that  I  enjoyed  in  making  the  experiments  of  which  I 
have  given  an  account  in  that  performance.  You  will 
perhaps  be  surprised  when  I  tell  you  that  I  have  sup- 
pressed a  whole  chapter  of  interesting  speculation, 
merely  with  a  view  of  leaving  to  others  a  tempting  field 
of  curious  investigation  untouched." 

The  Count,  being  apprehensive  that  these  assertions, 


470  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

which  admitted  of  many  interpretations,  coming  before 
the  public  contrary  to  his  intentions,  might  be  per- 
verted, felt  called  upon  to  guard  himself  against  mis- 
construction. He  might  be  charged  with  giving  out 
obscure  hints  of  important  information  which  he  held 
back,  and  thus  with  keeping  others  in  doubt  about  the 
originality  of  the  discoveries  made  by  their  own  investi- 
gations. This,  he  says,  would  tend  to  damp  instead  of 
exciting  the  spirit  of  inquiry.  He  might  also  be  sus- 
pected of  "  lying  in  wait  to  seize  on  the  fair  fruits  of 
the  labours  of  others."  He  therefore  justifies  himself 
by  affirming  that  the  assertions  he  had  privately  made 
to  Pictet  were  perfectly  true.  He  suppressed  some  of 
his  speculations  on  the  enticing  subject  which  he  had 
presented  to  those  fond  of  philosophical  .  pursuits,  in 
order  to  prompt  others  to  strike  out  roads  for  them- 
selves, instead  of  following  in  his  footsteps.  He  adds :  — 

"  And  with  regard  to  the  reputation  of  being  a  dis- 
cover er,  though  I  rejoice,  I  might  say  exult  and  tri- 
umph, in  the  progress  of  human  knowledge,  and  enjoy 
the  sweetest  delight  in  contemplating  the  advantages  to 
mankind  which  are  derived  from  the  introduction  of 
useful  improvements,  yet  I  can  truly  say  that  I  set 
no  very  high  value  on  the  honour  of  being  the  first  to 
stumble  on  those  treasures  which  everywhere  lie  so 
slightly  covered." 

In  reference  to  the  religious  sentiment  with  which 
he  had  concluded  the  first  part  of  his  Essay,  the  Count 
says:  "Though  some  may  smile  in  pity,  and  others 
frown  at  it,  I  am  neither  ashamed  nor  afraid  to  own 
that  I  consider  the  subject  as  being  of  the  utmost  im- 
portance to  the  peace,  order,  and  happiness  of  mankind 
in  our  present  advanced  state  of  society" 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  471 

With  these  preliminary  avowals  the  Count  continues 
the  rehearsal  of  his  experiments  to  prove  of  other  fluids 
what  he  had  proved  of  water  as  a  non-conductor  of  heat. 
He  describes  the  instruments  and  the  processes  by 
which  he  verified  the  fact  as  regards  oil,  and  even  mercury, 
which  is  a  metal  in  fusion,  and,  inferring  the  same  of  all 
fluids,  he  concludes  "  that  the  property  of  a  non-conductor 
is  even  essential  to  fluidity''  The  discovery  of  so  im- 
portant a  truth,  he  argues,  must  necessarily  change 
some  of  our  ideas  in  respect  to  the  mechanical  opera- 
tions in  many  of  the  great  phenomena  of  nature,  as  well 
as  in  many  still  more  interesting  chemical  operations, 
"which  we  are  able  to  direct,  but  which  we  find,  alas  ! 
very  difficult  to  explain." 

In  his  paper  on  Heat,  published  in  the  Philosophical 
Transactions  before  referred  to,  he  had  turned  his  dis- 
covery of  the  non-conducting  power  of  air  to  account- 
ing for  the  warmth  of  the  hair  of  beasts,  of  the  feath- 
ers of  birds,  of  artificial  clothing,  and  of  snow,  the 
winter  garment  of  the  earth,  and  also  to  explaining  the 
causes  of  the  coldness  and  the  directions  of  the  winds.. 
Also  in  his  Essay  on  the  Management  of  Heat  and  the 
Economy  of  Fuel,  he  had  turned  the  non-conducting 
power  of  steam  and  of  flame  to  the  explanation  of  the 
action  of  the  blow-pipe,  and  to  improvements  in  the 
construction  of  boilers.  He  now  proceeds  to  apply 
his  discoveries  to  chemistry,  vegetation,  and  the  animal 
economy.  "Perhaps/'  he  says,  "it  will  be  found  that 
every  change  of  form  in  every  kind  of  substance  is 
owing  to  Heatr."  We  must  refer  the  reader  to  the 
Essay  itself  if  he  would  be  informed  of  the  interesting 
facts,  and  the  curious  and  often  bold  speculations, 
sometimes  a  little  beyond  his  province,  which  the 


472  Life  of  Count  Rumford* 

Count  sets  forth.  He  reminds  us  that  there  are  but 
three  forms  under  which  all  sensible  bodies  are  found  to 
exist,  — that  of  a  solid,  that  of  a  fluid,  and  that  of  gas; 
and  that  every  substance  with  which  we  are  acquainted 
may  exist  under  all  those  three  forms  alternately,  the 
condition  for  either  form  being  dependent  upon  tem- 
perature. He  works  out  elaborately  his  hypothesis  of 
the  existence  of  intense  heat  in  the  midst  of  cold  liquids. 
He  recognizes  two  ways  in  which  philosophers,  like 
other  men,  may  be  excited  to  action  and  induced  to 
engage  zealously  in  the  investigation  of  any  curious 
subject  of  inquiry, — "  they  may  be  enticed,  and  they 
may  be  provoked.  It  will' probably  not  escape  the  pene- 
tration of  my  reader  that  I  have  endeavored  to  use  both 
these  methods.  I  am  well  aware  of  the  danger  that 
attends  the  latter  of  them  ;  but  the  passionate  fondness 
that  I  feel  for  the  favorite  objects  of  my  pursuits  fre- 
quently hurries  me  on  far  beyond  the  bounds  which 
prudence  would  mark  to  circumscribe  my  adventurous 


excursions." 


Count  Rumford  made  an  eighth  Essay  on  the 
Propagation  of  Heat  in  various  Substances,  by  a 
reprint  of  two  papers,  which  first  appeared  in  the 
Philosophical  Transactions,  — the  one  having  been  read 
before  the  Royal  Society  in  1786,  and  the  other,  for 
which  he  received  the  Copley  Medal  of  the  Society,  in 
1792.  He  gives  in  it  an  account  of  the  beginning  of 
his  experiments  on  the  conducting  power  of  the  Torri- 
cellian vacuum.  These  he  had  made  while  on  a  journey 
with  the  Elector,  at  Mannheim,  in  July,  1785,  in  pres- 
ence of  Professor  Hemmer,  of  the  Electoral  Academy 
of  Sciences,  of  that  city,  and  of  Charles  Artaria,  mete- 
orological instrument  maker,  who  assisted  him.  His 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  473 

experiments  led  him  to  a  philosophical  view  of  the 
well-known  facts  as  to  the  way  in  which  we  "catch 
cold "  or  become  afflicted  with  catarrhs ;  why  these 
disorders  prevail  most  in  the  cold  autumnal  rains  and 
upon  the  breaking  up  of  the  frost  in  the  spring;  whence 
it  is  that  sleeping  in  damp  beds  and  inhabiting  damp 
houses  is  so  very  dangerous ;  and  why  the  evening  air 
is  so  pernicious  in  summer  and  in  autumn,  and  why  it 
is  not  so  during  the  hard  frosts  of  winter. 

Finding  a  great  difference  between  the  conducting 
powers  of  common  air  and  of  the  Torricellian  vacuum, 
the  Count  continued  his  experiments  by  testing  the  con- 
ducting powers  of  common  air  of  different  degrees  of 
density.  He  was  surprised  at  the  result  of  his  experi- 
ments, though  he  could  not  discover  the  cause  of  the 
fact,  nor  account  for  it  that  there  is  so  little  difference 
in  the  conducting  powers  of  air  of  such  very  different 
degrees  of  rarity,  while  there  is  so  great  a  difference  in 
the  conducting  powers  of  air  and  of  the  Torricellian 
vacuum.  Obliged  by  the  return  of  the  Elector  to 
Munich  to  suspend  the  experiments  which  he  had  been 
pursuing  at  Mannheim,  he  was  privileged  by  his  patron 
in  being  allowed  to  take  M.  Artaria  back  with  him  to 
the  capital,  to  aid  him  in  the  construction  of  costly 
apparatus  for  pursuing  his  investigations. 

In  the  second  part  of  this  Essay,  which  is  substan- 
tially the  paper  read,  as  sent  by  him,  before  the  Royal 
Society,  January  19,  1792,  he  extends  the  inquiries  he 
had  been  making  concerning  the  conducting  powers  of 
fluids  to  those  of  solids,  particularly  such  bodies  as  are 
used  for  clothing.  The  especial  object  of  his  researches 
was  to  ascertain  the  laws  relative  to  the  confining  and 
directing  of  heat.  He  constructed  what  he  calls  a  pas- 


474  Life  of  Count  R^lmford. 

sage  thermometer,  the  tube  of  which  was  suspended  in 
a  cylindrical  glass  tube  terminating  in  a  glass  globe 
around  the  bulb  of  the  thermometer.  The  space  be- 
tween the  inner  surface  of  the  globe  and  the  outer  sur- 
face of  the  bulb  was  then  filled  successively  by  various 
substances  whose  conducting  powers  he  wished  to  test. 
The  instrument,  when  filled,  was  heated  in  boiling 
water,  and  afterwards  plunged  into  a  freezing  mixture 
of  pounded  ice  and  water,  or  vice  versa.  The  times  of 
cooling  or  heating  were  carefully  observed  by  the  scale 
of  the  thermometer  and  a  watch  which  beat  half-seconds. 
He  subjected  to  this  test  raw  silk,  sheep's  wool,  cotton- 
wool, linen  lint,  the  fur  of  the  beaver,  the  fur  of  a  white 
Russian  hare,  and  eider-down.  The  relative  warmth 
of  these  substances  proved  to  be  as  follows :  hare's 
fur  and  eider-down  were  the  warmest ;  then  came  in 
order  beaver's  fur,  raw  silk,  sheep's  wool,  cotton-wool, 
and  lastly  lint.  Rectifying  his  tests  by  others  which 
allowed  for  the  respective  density  and  the  internal  struc- 
ture of  these  various  substances,  he  proceeded  with  his 
experiments  on  other  solids.  In  revising  the  matter  of 
this  Essay  he  was  enabled  to  correct  his  own  error,  when 
he  first  wrote  the  paper,  as  to  the  conducting  power  of 
air. 

The  Count's  ninth  Essay  is  "  An  Inquiry  concern- 
ing the  Source  of  the  Heat  which  is  excited  by  Fric- 
tion." The  substance  of  it  was  read  before  the  Royal 
Society,  January  25,  1798.  It  was  after  he  had  been 
summoned  back  to  Munich  in  1796,  and  in  the  two 
years  following,  while  war,  with  the  dread  of  new  cam- 
paigns and  preparation  for  them,  were  engrossing  the 
anxieties  of  every  European  sovereign  and  people,  that 
Rumford  made  the  experiments  which  he  here  described. 


Life  of  Co^lnt  Rumford.  475 

In  the  scientific  results  which  he  obtained  from  them, 
in  the  theory  which  he  deduced,  and  in  the  large  philo- 
sophical generalizations  which  he  announced  as  war- 
ranted by  them,  he  is  fairly  to  be  regarded  as  the  dis- 
coverer and  first  promulgator  of  the  facts  and  principles 
which  are  grouped  under  the  now  familiar  designation 
of  the  Conservation  and  Correlation  of  Forces.  As  La- 
voisier—  with  whose  widow  Rumford  was  soon  to  form 
what  promised  to  be  a  felicitous,  though  it  proved  to 
be  an  uncongenial  marriage,  —  had  illustrated  a  new  era 
in  chemical  science  by  establishing  the  truth  that  in  the 
processes  of  analysis  no  atom  or  element  of  matter  is 
annihilated  or  irrecoverably  lost,  so  the  American  phi- 
losopher illustrated  the  corresponding  truth  as  to  Heat 
and  Force  once  generated. 

Count  Rumford  introduces  this,  as  he  does  each  of 
his  Essays,  with  one  of  those  general  and  comprehen- 
sive observations  which,  as  stated  in  his  lucid  and 
forcible  way,  convey  such  obvious  truths,  that,  as  we 
read  them,  we  almost  wonder  that  they  need  to  be 
set  forth.  He  reminds  us  that  the  habit  of  keeping 
the  eyes  open,  and  the  mind  attent,  in  the  ordinary 
affairs  of  life,  while  contemplating  some  curious  opera- 
tion of  nature,  or  pursuing  any  mere  mechanical  process 
in  art  or  manufacture,  may,  as  it  were  by  accident,  lead 
to  discoveries  such  as  will  not  reward  the  intensest 
meditations  of  philosophers  in  their  hours  of  study.  It 
was  by  accident,  he  says,  that  he  was  led  to  pursue  the 
experiments  the  rewarding  results  of  which  he  proceeds 
to  describe.  He  was  engaged  in  superintending  the 
boring  of  cannon  in  the  workshops  of  the  Electors 
arsenal  and  foundry  in  Munich,  when  his  attention  was 
arrested  by  observing  the  considerable  degree  of  heat 


476  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

which  a  brass  gun  so  soon  acquires  in  being  bored.  He 
found,  by  experiment,  that  the  metallic  chips  separated 
by  the  borer  had  an  intensity  of  heat  exceeding  that  of 
boiling  water.  He  was  persuaded  that  a  thorough  in- 
vestigation of  these  phenomena  would  afford  an  insight 
into  the  hidden  nature  of  heat,  and  help  to  decide  the  ex- 
istence or  the  non-existence  of  an  igneous  fluid,  — a  point 
on  which  the  opinions  of  philosophers  of  all  ages  have 
been  divided.  He  put  to  himself  the  question,  Whence 
comes  the  heat  actually  produced  in  the  mechanical 
operation  above  mentioned  ?  Is  it  furnished  by  the  metal- 
lic chips  which  are  separated  from  the  solid  mass  of  the 
metal  ?  If  so,  then,  according  to  the  doctrines  about 
latent  heat  and  caloric,  the  capacity  for  heat  of  the  parts 
of  the  metal  so  reduced  to  chips  ought  not  only  to  be 
changed,  but  the  change  undergone  by  them  should  be 
sufficiently  great  to  account  for  all  the  heat  produced. 
But  the  test  which  compared  some  of  these  chips  with 
the  same  quantity  of  thin  slips  separated  by  a  fine  saw 
from  the  same  block  of  metal,  proved  that  the  capacity 
of  heat  of  the  former  had  not  been  changed.  It  was 
evident,  then,  that  the  heat  produced  by  boring  was  not 
furnished  at  the  expense  of  the  latent  heat  of  the  metal- 
lic chips.  Being  assured  of  this  fact  for  a  starting- 
point,  the  philosopher  proceeded  with  a  series  of  ex- 
periments in  the  succession  of  which  the  elements  of  his 
inquiry  and  the  conditions  for  investigating  them  led 
him  to  contrive  apparatus,  and  to  advance  gradually  to 
his  great  discovery.  Reminding  his  readers  that  he  was 
not  chargeable  with  prodigality  or  waste  of  material  in 
these  experiments,  he  informs  us  of  an  interesting  fact 
in  the  process  of  constructing  a  cannon  of  which  he 
availed  himself.  In  the  casting  of  a  gun,  he  says,  the 


Life  of  Coitnt  Riunford.  477 

cylinder  is  made  longer  than  the  intended  cannon,  a 
projection  nearly  ten  inches  beyond  what  will  be  the 
muzzle  of  the  completed  weapon  forming  part  of  the 
contents  of  the  mould.  The  object  of  this  additional 
material  is,  that  by  the  pressure  of  its  weight  on  the 
metal  below  it  in  the  mould,  while  it  is  cooling,  the 
gun  may  be  more  compact  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
muzzle,  when,  without  this  precaution,  the  metal  there 
would  be  likely  to  be  porous  or  honeycombed.  Tak- 
ing a  brass  six-pounder  cast  solid,  and  rough  from  the 
foundry,  he  had  it  finished  by  the  usual  process  of  turn- 
ing. He  then  cut  round  the  projection  beyond  the 
muzzle,  leaving  it  attached  only  by  a  small  cylindrical 
neck  to  the  intended  muzzle.  This  short  cylinder,  sup- 
ported horizontally,  and  still  united  to  the  cannon,  was 
bored,  in  the  usual  way,  to  a  depth  which  left  to  it  a 
solid  bottom  two  and  six  tenths  inches  in  thickness. 
Intending  to  use  this  cylinder  for  the  purpose  of  gene- 
rating heat  by  friction^  a  blunt  borer  of  hardened  steel 
was  pressed  against  the  bottom  of  the  cavity  in  it  by  a 
force  of  ten  thousand  pounds,  while  the  cannon  to 
which  the  cylinder  was  attached  was  made  to  revolve  by 
horse-power  at  the  rate  of  thirty-two  times  a  minute.  In 
order  that  he  might  measure  the  heat  that  accumulated 
in  the  cylinder,  he  introduced  into  i-t  a  small  cylindrical 
mercurial  thermometer,  through  a  round  hole,  drilled 
perpendicularly  to  the  axis  of  the  cylinder,  thirty-seven 
hundredths  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  and  four  and  two 
tenths  inches  in  depth.  This  hole  ended  in  the  middle 
of  the  solid  part  of  the  metal  which  formed  the  bottom 
of  its  bore.  The  object  of  this  'first  experiment  was  to 
ascertain  how  much  heat  was  actually  generated  by  fric- 
tion under  these  given  conditions, — the  pressure  of  a 


478  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

blunt  steel  borer,  by  means  of  a  strong  screw  with  the  force 
often  thousand  pounds,  against  the  bottom  of  the  bore 
of  the  cylinder  while  that  cylinder  was  made  to  revolve 
by  horse- power  thirty-two  times  in  a  minute.  To  di- 
minish as  much  as  possible  the  loss  of  any  part  of  the 
heat  that  might  be  generated,  the  cylinder  was  carefully 
wrapped  in  thick  and  warm  flannel,  and  defended  from 
the  cold  air  of  the  atmosphere.  The  area  of  the  surface 
at  which  the  rounded  end  of  the  steel  borer  was  in  contact 
with  the  cavity  at  the  bottom  of  the  bore  in  the  cylinder 
was  nearly  two  and  one  third  inches.  The  temperature 
of  the  air  and  of  the  cylinder  at  the  beginning  of  the 
experiment  was  60°  F.  At  the  end  of  thirty  minutes, 
when  the  cylinder  had  made  960  revolutions,  the  mer- 
cury, as  indicated  by  the  thermometer  introduced  into 
the  cavity  above  described,  rose  almost  instantly  to 
130°. 

In  order  to  approximate  to  the  amount  of  the  heat 
which  had  been  given  off  during  the  time  in  which  the 
heat  generated  by  the  friction  had  been  accumulating, 
the  experimenter  took  note  of  the  rapidity  with  which 
the  heat  escaped  out  of  the  cylinder.  To  this  end, 
while  the  machinery  was  stopped,  he  left  the  thermom- 
eter in  the  cavity,  observing  at  short  intervals  of  tkme 
the  temperature  which  it  indicated.  This  fell  iio°in 
forty-one  minutes. 

The  weight  of  the  metallic  dust  which  had  been  de- 
tached by  the  borer  from  the  bottom  of  the  cylinder  was 
found  to  be  837  grains  Troy.  The  Count  asks,  "Is  it 
possible  that  the  very  considerable  quantity  of  heat  that 
was  produced  in  this  experiment  (a  quantity  which  actu- 
ally raised  the  temperature  of  above  in  pounds  of  gun- 
metal  at  least  70  degrees  of  Fahrenheit's  thermometer, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  479 

and  which  of  course  would  have  been  capable  of  melting 
six  and  a  half  pounds  of  ice,  or  of  causing  near  five 
pounds  of  ice-cold  water  to  boil)  could  have  been  fur- 
nished by  so  inconsiderable  a  quantity  of  metallic  dust, 
and  this  merely  in  consequence  of  a  change  of  its  ca- 
pacity for  Heat  ?  "  The  weight  of  the  metallic  dust  was 
no  more  than  •$%-$  part  of  that  of  the  cylinder.  The 
dust,  then,  would  need  to  have  parted  with  948  degrees 
of  heat  to  have  raised  the  temperature  of  the  cylinder 
by  a  single  degree.  Consequently  the  dust  must  have 
yielded  66,360  degrees  of  the  virtue  called  latent  heat,  in 
order  to  have  produced  the  effects  which  were  reached 
by  the  experiment ! 

This  experiment  having  been  repeated  with  the  ut- 
most care  several  times,  the  Count  satisfied  himself  that 
the  heat  which,  as  he  prefers  to  say,  had  been  excited, 
rather  than  generated,  by  them,  was  not  furnished  at  the 
expense  of  the  latent  heat  or  combined  caloric  of  the  metal. 

The  Count's  second  experiment  was  for  the  purpose 
of  ascertaining  whether  the  air,  which  had  free  access  to 
the  inside  and  bottom  of  the  bore  in  the  cylinder,  did  or 
did  not  contribute  to  the  generation  of  the  heat.  He 
therefore  excluded  the  external  air  by  means  of  a  piston 
fitted  to  the  mouth  of  the  bore.  The  test  proved 
that  there  was  no  diminution  of  the  quantity  of  the  heat 
excited. 

A  slight  doubt  suggesting  itself  whether  some  part 
of  the  heat  produced  might  not  be  occasioned  by  the 
friction  of  the  piston,  fitted  as  it  was,  air  tight,  by 
means  of  leather  collars,  the  Count  had  recourse  to 
a  third  experiment.  His  apparatus  was  enclosed  in  a 
strong  deal  box,  which  was  filled  with  cold  water, 
and  suspended  between  the  muzzle  of  the  cannon 


480  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

as  it  revolved  and  the  borer  with  the  piston  that  was 
turned  against  the  bore  of  the  cylinder.     Soon  the  water, 
which  surrounded  the  cylinder  began  to  be  warm.      In 
two  hours  and  a  half  "  IT  ACTUALLY  BOILED  !  " 
The  philosopher  shall  speak  for  himself:  — 

"  It  would  be  difficult  to  describe  the  surprise  and  astonish- 
ment expressed  in  the  countenances  of  the  bystanders  on 
seeing  so  large  a  quantity  of  cold  water  heated  and  actually 
made  to  boil  without  any  fire.  Though  there  was,  in  fact, 
nothing  that  could  justly  be  considered  as  surprising  in  this 
event,  yet  I  acknowledge  fairly  that  it  afforded  me  a  degree  of 
childish  pleasure  which,  were  I  ambitious  of  the  reputation  of  a 
grave  philosopher,  I  ought  most  certainly  to  hide  rather  than 
discover." 

He  then  proceeds  to  estimate  the  total  quantity  of 
heat  generated,  accumulated,  and  dispersed  by  the  ex- 
periment in  the  water  and  in  the  apparatus. 

From  the  quantity  of  heat  generated  in  the  last  ex- 
periment, and  from  the  time  required  for  its  production, 
Rurnford  next  sought  to  ascertain  the  velocity  of  its  pro- 
duction. He  wished  also  to  determine  how  large  a  fire 
must  have  been,  or  how  much  fuel  must  have  been  con- 
sumed, in  order  that  in  burning  equably  it  should  have 
produced  by  combustion  the  same  quantity  of  heat  in 
the  same  time.  He  found  that  nine  wax  candles  of 
three  quarters  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  all  burning  to- 
gether with  clear  bright  flames,  would  not  produce  so 
great  a  quantity  of  heat  as  had  been  excited  in  the 
above-described  experiment.  His  computations  showed, 
further,  how  much  heat  might  be  produced  through 
mechanical  contrivances,  employing  the  strength  of  a 
horse,  without  either  fire,  light,  combustion,  or -chem- 
ical decomposition,  —  to  be  had  recourse  to  in  case  of 


Life  of  Coimt  Rumford.  481 

necessity  in  cooking  victuals.  Having  ventured  on  this 
suggestion,  he  is  careful  to  anticipate  by  his  own  good 
sense  the  ridicule  that  might  be  turned  upon  him,  by 
confessing  that  no  advantageous  circumstances  can  be 
imagined  for  thus  generating  heat  by  horse-power,  inas- 
much as  more  heat  might  be  got  by  using  the  horse- 
fodder  as  fuel. 

In  the  last  experiment  the  water  in  the  box,  though 
it  surrounded  the  metallic  cylinder,  was  not  allowed  to 
enter  the  cavity  of  its  bore,  being  prevented  by  the 
piston,  and  so  did  not  come  in  contact  with  the  metal- 
lic surfaces  where  the  heat  was  generated.  No  essential 
difference  followed  in  the  trial  of  another  experiment  in 
which  this  free  contact  of  the  water  with  the  inside  of 
the  bore  was  allowed.  Rumford  was,  however,  sur- 
prised by  his  incidental  observation  that  the  almost  in- 
supportable grating  noise  made  by  the  borer  in  rubbing 
against  the  bottom  of  the  cylinder  when  only  in  contact 
with  air  was  not  diminished  when  they  were  wet  by 
water. 

These  experiments  having  been  thus  pursued  to  re- 
sults furnishing  new  materials  for  thought  and  scientific 
deduction,  the  Count  says  he  was  naturally  brought  to 
that  great  question  which  has  so  long  engaged  the 
speculations  of  philosophers,  namely,  What  is  heat  ? 
Is  there  any  such  thing  as  an  igneous  fluid?  Is  there 
anything  that  can  with  propriety  be  called  caloric  ? 
Whence  came  the  heat  given  off  in  the  foregoing  ex- 
periments  in  a  constant  stream,  in  all  directions,  with- 
out diminution  or  exhaustion,  as  excited  in  the  friction 
of  two  metallic  surfaces  ?  It  was  found  that  this  heat 
was  not  furnished  by  the  small  particles  of  metal  de- 
tached by  rubbing  from  the  larger  mass.  Nor  was  it 
31 


482  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

furnished  by  the  air,  —  for  in  one  set  of  the  experiments, 
the  apparatus  being  immersed  in  water,  the  atmospheric 
air  was  excluded.  Nor  yet  was  the  heat  furnished  by  the 
water,  because,  first,  the  water  was  receiving  heat  from 
the  machinery,  and  therefore  could  not  at  the  same 
time  be  giving  heat  to  it ;  and,  second,  because  there 
was  no  chemical  decomposition  of  the  water.  So  con- 
siderate and  cautious  had  the  Count's  method  been,  that, 
allowing  for  the  possibility  of  this  latter  contingency, 
he  had  been  on  the  watch  for  any  sign  of  the  decom- 
position of  the  water  by  the  escape  of  either  of  its  com- 
ponent elastic  fluids,  and  had  even  made  preparations 
for  seizing  and  examining  any  air-bubbles  which  might 
rise  through  it.  It  being  evident  that  the  heat  was  not 
to  be  referred  to  either  of  these  sources,  and  that  the 
source  of  it,  as  generated  by  friction,  was  inexhaustible, 
the  conclusion  reached  by  Rumford  is  thus  expressed  in 
his  own  clear  language. 

"  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  anything  which  any  in- 
sulated body  or  system  of  bodies  can  continue  to  furnish  with- 
out limitation  cannot  possibly  be  a  material  substance  ;  and  it 
appears  to  me  to  be  extremely  difficult,  if  not  quite  impossible, 
to  form  any  distinct  idea  of  anything  capable  of  being  excited 
and  communicated  in  the  manner  the  Heat  was  excited  and 
communicated  in  these  Experiments,  except  it  be  MOTION. 

"  I  am  very  far  from  pretending  to  know  how,  or  by  what 
means  or  mechanical  contrivance,  that  particular  kind  of  mo- 
tion in  bodies  which  has  been  supposed  to  constitute  Heat  is 
excited,  continued,  and  propagated,  and  I  shall  not  presume  to 
trouble  the  Society  with  mere  conjectures ;  particularly  on  a 
subject  wfiich,  during  so  many  thousand  years,  the  most  en- 
lightened philosophers  have  endeavored,  but  in  vain,  to  com- 
prehend. 

u  But,  although  the  mechanism  of  Heat  should,  in  fact,  be 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  483 

one  of  those  mysteries  of  nature  which  are  beyond  the  reach  of 
human  intelligence,  this  ought  by  no  means  to  discourage  us,  or 
even  lessen  our  ardour  in  our  attempts  to  investigate  the  laws 
of  its  operations.  How  far  can  we  advance  in  any  of  the  paths 
which  Science  has  opened  to  us  before  we  find  ourselves 
enveloped  in  those  thick  mists  which  on  every  side  bound  the 
horizon  of  the  human  intellect  ?  But  how  ample  and  how 
interesting  is  the  field  that  is  given  us  to  explore  ! 

"  Nobody,  surely,  in  his  sober  senses,  has  ever  pretended  to 
understand  the  mechanism  of  gravitation  ;  and  yet  what  sublime 
discoveries  was  our  immortal  Newton  enabled  to  make,  merely 
by  the  investigation  of  the  laws  of  its  action  ! 

"  The  effects  produced  in  the  world  by  the  agency  of  Heat 
are  probably  just  as  extensive,  and  quite  as  important,  as  those 
which  are  owing  to  the  tendency  of  the  particles  of  matter 
towards  each  other  ;  and  there  is  no  doubt  but  its  operations  are 
in  all  cases  determined  by  laws  equally  immutable. 

"  Before  I  finish  this  Essay,  I  would  beg  leave  to  observe, 
that,  although  in  treating  the  subject  I  have  endeavored  to 
investigate  I  have  made  no  mention  of  the  names  of  those  who 
have  gone  over  the  same  ground  before  me,  nor  of  the  success 
of  their  labours,  this  omission  has  not  been  owing  to  any  want 
of  respect  for  my  predecessors,  but  was  merely  to  avoid  pro- 
lixity, and  to  be  more  at  liberty  to  pursue  without  interruption 
the  natural  train  of  my  own  ideas." 

In  reference  to  the  frank  avowal  made  in  this  last 
paragraph,  a  passing  notice  may  not  be  out  of  place 
here,  of  two  depreciatory  articles  upon  Count  Rum- 
ford's  scientific  merits  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  Vol. 
IV.  p.  399,  etc.  The  articles  which  are  ostensibly 
critical  notices  of  Rumford's  papers  concerning  the 
Nature  of  Heat,  and  concerning  a  "Curious  Phenom- 
enon in  the  Glaciers  of  Chamouny,"  which  he  had 
observed  with  his  friend  Pictet,  are  evidently  strongly 
imbued  with  jealousy  and  personal  malignity.  They 


484  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

sharply  charge  upon  Rumford  that  he  has  assumed  an 
original  discovery  which  does  not  belong  to  him,  and 
that  he  plagiarized  from  Leslie.  Rumford  had  at  the 
time  a  bitter  controversy  with  Leslie,  and  it  is  alto- 
gether probable  that  the  latter  was  the  source  of  the 
imputation  against  Rumford  of  making  an  unacknowl- 
edged use  of  his  thoughts  and  apparatus. 

The  records  of  scientific  research,  experiment,  and 
discovery  do  not  contain  any  more  lucid  or  creditable 
communication  in  the  higher  interests  of  philosophy 
than  that  which  is  so  admirably  set  forth  in  this  last- 
mentioned  essay  of  Count  Rumford.  It  secures  to  him 
an  honorable  distinction  and  fame  as  a  prime  and  emi- 
nently successful  guide  in  that  new  path  of  experimental 
philosophy  which  has  developed  the  principles  of  the 
mutual  relation  and  the  indestructibility  offerees.  Pro- 
fessor Tyndall,  in  his  work  on  Heat,  has  but  moder-' 
ately  recognized  the  claims  and  merit  of  Rumford  when, 
after  largely  quoting  from  his  Essay,  he  adds:  "When 
the  history  of  the  dynamical  theory  of  heat  is  written, 
the  man  who  in  opposition  to  the  scientific  belief  of  his 
time  could  experiment  and  reason  upon  experiment,  as 
did  Rumford  in  the  investigation  here  referred  to,  can- 
not be  lightly  passed  over." 

The  most  appreciative  recent  estimate  of  Count  Rum- 
ford's  actual  experimental  discoveries  and  philosophical 
genius  is  that  made  by  Edward  L.  Youmans,  M.  D., 
in  his  compilation  of  essays  on  The  Correlation  and 
Conservation  of  Forces  :  A  Series  of  Expositions,  by 
Professor  Grove,  Professor  Helmholtz,  Dr.  Mayer, 
Dr.  Faraday,  Professor  Liebig,  and  Dr.  Carpenter.'* 
The  editor  and  commentator  upon  some  of  the  essays 

*  New  York:   D.  Appleton  &  Co.     1865. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  485 

of  this  series  of  writers  endeavors  with  marked  candor 
to  recognize  their  respective  services  and  merits  in  deal- 
ing with  the  great  subject  of  investigation  common  to 
them  and  to  other  philosophic  inquirers  of  the  last  and 
the  present  age.  He  endeavors,  indeed,  to  go  farther, 
and  to  trace  and  distribute  among  them  the  portion  or 
degree  of  honor  which  belongs  to  each  of  them  for  his 
measure  of  success  in  working  upon  the  new  vein  of 
truth.  This  distribution,  however,  he  finds  to  be 
difficult.  When  many  well-informed  and  acute  minds 
furnished  alike  with  the  stores  and  results  already  at- 
tained in  a  special  science,  and  starting  from  a  position 
already  reached,  look  out  with  their  unpatented  instru- 
ments and  with  their  approved  methods  upon  the  open- 
ing way  of  investigation  for  the  future,  with  the  themes 
which  instruct  as  well  as  tease  their  curiosity,  it  is  not 
easy  always  to  assign  to  any  one  a  discovery  or  an 
advance  which  may  be  simultaneously  made  by  many. 
"  Great  discoveries  belong  not  so  much  to  individuals 
as  to  humanity;  they  are  less  inspirations  of  genius 
than  births  of  eras."  The  history  of  science  is  full  of 
the  records  of  these  simultaneous  discoveries,  and  the 
biographies  of  philosophers  too  often  are  painful  plead- 
ings for  rival  claims. 

Dr.  Youmans,  in  his  introduction  to  his  compilation, 
gives  a  brief  sketch  of  the  life  and  career  of  Count 
Rumford,  substantially  correct.  After  quoting  the 
sentence  given  above  from  Professor  Tyndall,  he  adds 
that,  — 

"  If  other  English  writers  had  been  equally  just,  there  would  be 
less  necessity  for  the  exposition  of  Rumford's  labors  and  claims. 
But,"  he  continues,  "there  has  been  a  manifest  disposition  in 
various  quarters  to  obscure  and  depreciate  them.  Dr.  Whewell, 


486  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

in  his  History  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,  treats  the  subject  of 
thermotics  without  mentioning  him.  An  eminent  Edinburgh 
professor,  writing  recently  in  the  Philosophical  Magazine,  under 
the  confessed  influence  of  '  patriotism  '  undertakes  to  make  the 
dynamical  theory  of  heat  an  English  monopoly,  due  to  Sir 
Isaac  Newton,  Sir  Humphry  Davy,  and  Dr.  J.  P.  Joule  ; 
while  an  able  writer  in  a  late  number  of  the  North  British 
Review,  in  sketching  the  historic  progress  of  the  new  views, 
puts  Davy  forward  as  their  founder,  and  assigns  to  Rumford  a 
minor  and  subsequent  place." 

How  unwarranted  is  the  claim  for  priority  thus  ad- 
vanced for  Davy  will  be  evident  from  the  simple  state- 
ment of  the  facts  in  the  case.  In  1799,  the  year  after 
Rumford's  full  publication  of  his  experiments  with 
their  results^  Davy,  at  the  age  of  twenty-one,  published 
a  tract  at  Bristol  relating  some  of  his  own  experiments, 
and  proving  that  he  rejected  the  common  theory  of 
caloric  or  latent  heat.  'The  notice  of  Rumford  was 
drawn  to  Davy  through  this  tract,  in  which  he  recog- 
nized a  partial  accordance  with  his  own  views,  and  an 
interesting  and  promising,  though  as  yet  but  very  im- 
perfect perception,  recognition,  and  treatment  of  the 
elements  of  the  great  subject  of  investigation.  Rum- 
ford  was  induced,  mainly  by  his  appreciation  of  the 
ability  manifested  by  Davy  in  dealing  with  that  subject 
which  had  so  long  and  so  successfully  engaged  his  own 
laborious  and  ingenious  efforts,  to  entertain  favorably 
the  suggestion  of  giving  the  writer  of  the  tract  a  situa- 
tion in  the  Royal  Institution,  as  already  related.  Davy, 
however,  does  not  appear  to  have  directed  his  inquiries 
upon  the  quantitative  relation  between  mechanical  force 
and  heat.  It  was  as  long  after  as  the  year  1812  that,  in 
his  Chemical  Philosophy,  he  for  the  first  time  clearly 
stated  the  conclusion  that  "  the  immediate  cause  of 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  487 

the  phenomena  of  heat  is  motion,  and  the  laws  of  its 
communication  are  precisely  the  same  as  those  of  the 
communication  of  motion." 

Dr.  Youmans,  with  admirable  distinctness  of  state- 
ment and  with  the  full  warrant  of  truth,  distributes, 
under  the  following  specifications,  a  summary  of  the 
claims  of  the  American  philosopher  :  — 

"  i.  He  was  the  man  who'  first  took  the  question  of  the 
nature  of  heat  out  of  the  domain  of  metaphysics,  where  it  had 
been  speculated  upon  since  the  time  of  Aristotle,  and  placed  it 
upon  the  true  basis  of  physical  experiment. 

tc  2.  He  first  proved  the  insufficiency  of  the  current  explana- 
tions of  the  sources  of  heat,  and  demonstrated  the  falsity  of  the 
prevailing  view  of  its  materiality. 

"  3.  He  first  estimated  the  quantitative  relation  between  the 
heat  produced  by  friction  and  that  by  combustion. 

"4.  He  first  showed  the  quantity  of  heat  produced  by  a 
definite  amount  of  mechanical  work,  and  arrived  at  a  result 
remarkably  near  the  finally  established  law. 

"5.  He  pointed  out  other  methods  to  be  employed  in  deter- 
mining the  amount  of  heat  produced  by  the  expenditure  of  me- 
chanical power,  instancing  particularly  the  agitation  of  water  or 
other  liquids,  as  in  churning. 

"  6.  He  regarded  the  power  of  animals  as  due  to  their  food, 
therefore  as  having  a  definite  source  and  not  created,  and  thus 
applied  his  views  of  force  to  the  organic  world. 

"  7.  Rumford  was  the  first  to  demonstrate  the  quantitative 
convertibility  of  force  in  an  important  case,  and  the  first  to 
reach,  experimentally,  the  fundamental  conclusion  that  heat  is 
but  a  mode  of  motion." 

Nor  did  Rumford  immediately  find  himself  to  be 
followed,  as  he  had  so  plainly  intimated  his  expectations 
and  desire  that  he  should  be,  by  many  inquirers  pursu- 
ing the  path  and  method  which  he  had  opened.  The 
distinguished  Dr.  Thomas  Young,  at  one  time  the 


488  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

grateful  admirer  and  friend  of  Rumford,  —  pronounced 
by  Dr.  Youmans  ((  perhaps  the  greatest  mind  in  sci- 
ence since  Newton/' — failed  to  give  currency  to  the 
novel  conclusion  which  the  Count  had  so  sufficiently 
verified.  Yet  the  publication  of  Rumford's  experi- 
ments, and  of  the  views  which  they  led  him  to  adopt, 
was  certainly  not  among  the  least  of  the  agencies  and 
guides  which  have  induced  so  many  savans  of  Europe, 
during  the  last  twenty-five  years,  to  make  a  profound 
study  of  the  relations  of  forces,  —  a  study  the  signal  re- 
sults of  which  now  enrich  so  many  learned  essays.  In- 
deed, so  numerous  have  been  the  inquirers  in  this  field, 
and  so  mutually  helpful  and  suggestive  have  been  the 
contributions  made  by  each  of  them  to  the  common 
stock  of  the  philosophy  of  forces,  that  it  is  impossible 
to  distribute  among  them  the  respective  shares  of  award 
for  their  individual  help  in  assuring  the  now  accepted 
theories.  The  names  of  Englishmen,  Danes,  Germans, 
Frenchmen,  and  Americans  are  gathered  on  the  list  of 
th'ose  who  by  speculation,  theory,  or  experiment  have 
followed  in  the  track  of  Rumford  without  finding  rea- 
son to  leave  it.  Seguin  of  France,  Grove  and  Joule  of 
England,  Mayer  of  Germany,  and  Colding  of  Den- 
mark, the  earlier  disciples  of  the  new  theory,  have  found 
successors  in  Helmholtz,  Holtzman,  Clausius,  Faraday, 
Thompson,  Rankine,  Tyndall,  Carpenter,  and  others. 
Professor  Henry  and  Leconte,  in  the  United  States, 
have  also  made  contributions  to  the  theory  and  litera- 
ture of  the  subject. 

Dr.  Huxley  does  not  fail  to  assign  to  Rumford  the 
high  place  belonging  to  him  for  his  leadership  in  "  the 
theory  of  the  persistence  or  indestructibility  of  force." 

*  Lecture  on  the  Advisableness  of  improving  Natural  Knowledge. 


Life  of  Count  Ruwiford.  489 

Count  Rumford's  papers  on  Heat,  either  as  com- 
municated to  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  as  read  before  the 
Royal  Society  and  the  French  Institute,  or  as  put  into 
print  under  his  own  eye,  will  be  found  to  be  so  con- 
tinuous and  numerous,  and  to  extend  over  so  long  a 
series  of  years,  as  to  justify  the  assertion  that  of  all  the 
subjects  of  his  investigation  this  was  his  favorite  and 
engrossing  theme.  His  first  communication  on  the 
subject  dates  in  1786;  his  last,  in  1812. 

If  we  turn  from  the  strictly  scientific  to  consider 
briefly  the  experimental  results  of  the  practical  projects 
and  improvements  introduced  by  Count  Rumford  into 
household  economy  and  the  administration  of  pub- 
lic charity,  we  can  trace  these  results  as  he  himself  saw 
them  during  the  last  years  of  his  residence  in  England. 
In  Germany  the  people  had  been  used  to  closed  stoves 
for  obtaining  warmth  and  for  cooking  food.  In  Eng- 
land open  fireplaces  for  wood,  or  open  grates  for  coal, 
were  identified  with  the  habits  and  the  requisitions  for 
comfort  and  cheer  in  all  houses.  English  travellers  in 
America  to  this  day — Dickens  having  been  among 
the  most  emphatic  in  his  expressions  —  regard  our 
stoves  and  hot-air  furnaces  as  abominations.  Count 
Rumford,  in  the  home  of  his  childhood,  and  in  the 
houses  of  his  neighbors,  had  seen  the  enormous  square 
mass  of  stone  and  brick  rising  from  the  cellar  on  an 
arch,  and  passing  through  the  centre  of  the  structure, 
which  seemed  to  be  built  to  surround  it,  till  it  pierced 
the  roof,  without  any  division  of  flues  through  at  least  a 
part  of  its  course.  There  was  probably  not  a  stove  in 
New  England  when  he  left  it,  save  only,  it  may  have 
been,  the  little  tin  boxes  arranged  for  warming  the  feet, 
which  some  delicate  matrons  carried  with  them,  on 


49°  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Sundays,  into  the  barn-like  and  teeth-chattering  meet- 
ing-houses. Franklin  had  preceded  him  by  a  few  years, 
in  devising  those  iron  jambs,  united  by  a  narrow  mantel 
at  the  top,  which  were  inserted  nearly  on  the  front  of  an 
old  deep  fireplace,  that  had  in  the  mean  while  been  par- 
titioned by  an  apron  of  brick-work  or  an  iron  back  like 
a  gravestone,  through  an  orifice  between  the  top  of 
which  and  the  throat  of  the  chimney  the  smoke  could 
pass  off.  As  a  boy,  most  probably,  Benjamin  Thomp- 
son had  helped  his  mother  to  bring  in  one  of  the  old- 
fashioned  New-England  <c  back-logs,"  four  feet  in 
length,  from  the  trunk  of  a  hard-wood  tree,  for  her 
kitchen  fire,  —  the  only  fire  kept  in  such  a  home,  except 
on  gala-days.  Rumford  had  seen  the  Franklin  fire- 
places in  use,  and  he  introduced  substantially  the  really 
excellent  qualities  of  them  in  his  own  plans.  But  very 
soon  after  the  Franklin  models  had  become  common, 
the  original  provision  made  by  Franklin  for  the  circu- 
lation of  air  through  them  was  neglected.  Rumford 
found  that  if  he  would  meet  the  demands  of  the  Eng- 
lish people,  he  must  gratify  the  national  preference  for 
meats  roasted,  fried,  and  broiled,  above  those  prepared 
by  boiling  or  stewing.  He  had  also  to  provide,  if  pos- 
sible, for  apparatus  which  in  the  summer  season  would 
allow  for  the  preparation  of  food  without  heating  the 
apartment,  while  the  apparatus  would  answer  in  the 
winter  alike  for  cooking  and  warming.  The  rigidly 
practical  and  experimental  way  in  which  he  tested  every 
scheme  and  method  that  he  put  on  trial,  and  the 
conscientious  scrupulousness  with  which  he  proved  all 
his  processes  before  he  made  them  public,  together  with 
the  admirable  candor  with  which  he  would  recognize 
and  announce  his  own  mistakes,  insured  a  practical 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  491 

improvement  on  every  subject  of  the  kind  that  engaged 
his  attention.  He  knew  very  well  that  as  there  is  no 
panacea  in  medicine,  so  there  is  no  faultless  piece  of 
mechanism  which  will  answer  ends  so  unlike  as  were 
some  of  the  objects  which  he  tried  to  attain  at  the  same 
time.  His  desire  and  pains  to  secure  testimonials,  from 
private  persons  and  from  the  managers  of  public  insti- 
tutions, of  the  utility  of  his  improvements  indicate  that 
he  had  to  urge  them  into  notice.  They  failed  in  use 
sometimes,  because  of  the  neglect  of  some  of  the  prime 
conditions  frankly  and  emphatically  declared  by  him  as 
essential  to  their  success. 

The  Count's  tenth  Essay  relates  mainly  to  the  con- 
struction of  kitchen  fireplaces  and  utensils.  It  is  the 
longest  of  his  essays,  and  was  published  at  intervals, 
four  years  after  it  was  announced,  in  three  parts,  —  the 
third  of  which  appeared  only  just  before,  if  not  even 
after,  his  leaving  England  for  the  last  time.  It  is  of  an 
exceedingly  homely,  economical,  and  thrifty  tenor,  ex- 
hibiting many  tokens  and  expressions  of  the  writer's 
earnest  and  practical  benevolence,  especially  of  his  pure 
and  generous  sympathies  with,  and  his  desire  to  pro- 
mote the  comfort  of,  the  poor,  as  also  of  his  horror  of 
waste  of  anything  good,  and  of  his  deep  conviction  that 
the  means  of  life  may  be  made  to  afford  far  more  of 
pleasure  and  satisfaction  than  men  ordinarily  obtain 
from  them.  There  are  evidences,  likewise,  in  the  Essay, 
that  the  Count  was  aware  of  the  jeers  and  ridicule  occa- 
sionally visited  upon  him  in  the  ephemeral  journals  for 
his  very  sublunary  theorizings  and  experiments.  We 
are  glad  to  have  had  Pictet's  testimony,  as  given  on  a 
previous  page,  that  the  Count  was  only  amused  by 
some  of  the  references  to  him  in  the  newspapers. 


492  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

This  Essay  treats  of  the  more  common  imperfections 
in  the  plan,  construction,  and  machinery  of  kitchen 
fireplaces,  and  of  the  means  for  remedying  them  ;  gives 
descriptions  of  many  kitchens,  public  and  private,  then 
in  operation,  made  under  his  own  oversight  and  direc- 
tions, —  that  on  which  he  prided  himself  most  being 
in  the  house  of  Baron  de  Lerchenfield,  at  Munich,  — and 
suggests  the  necessary  alterations  and  improvements 
that  may  be  made  in  open  fireplaces,  for  cooking,  and 
the  superiority  of  closed  ones,  and  of  nests  of  ovens, 
with  a  condemnation  of  smoke-jacks  as  fearfully  waste- 
ful. Then  we  have  a  full  description  of  his  famous 
roasters,  with  improvements.  He  had  found,  on  his 
return  to  England,  that  this  invention  of  his  had  in 
some  places  fallen  into  discredit  on  trial,  and  that  its 
use  had  not  in  all  cases  vindicated  its  advantages  for 
promised  convenience  and  economy.  These  failures  he 
ascribed  to  a  neglect  of  the  rules  which  he  had  so  care- 
fully given  for  its  construction,  and  to  the  heedlessness 
or  prejudices  of  cooks.  He  sets  himself  resolutely  to 
maintain  its  value,  and  to  expose  the  errors  of  its  con- 
struction or  use.  He  took  pains  to  instruct  an  iron- 
monger, Mr.  Summers,  of  New  Bond  Street,  and  his 
cook,  how  to  set  a  roaster,  and  to  make  daily  use  of  it 
in  his  kitchen,  to  show  to  his  customers  in  the  presence 
of  other  cooks.  He  also  prevailed  on  an  intelligent 
bricklayer  to  be  taught  how  to  set  roasters  properly, 
and  to  follow  directions  without  deviation  ;  everything 
depending  upon  accuracy  in  this  matter.  Nearly  a 
thousand  of  these  roasters  appear,  as  the  result  of  the 
Count's  efforts,  to  have  been  set  up  in  the  next  two 
years.  As  he  always  positively  refused  to  take  out  a 
patent,  or  in  any  way  to  restrict  the  freest  use  of  any  of 


Life  of  Coimt  Riimford.  493 

his  inventions  and  improvements,  and,  indeed,  exposed 
models  of  them  in  the  repository  of  the  Institution  for 
workmen  to  examine  and  copy,  his  sole  desire  was  that 
the  public  should  be  furnished  with  them  at  the  lowest 
price  for  which  competing  mechanics  could  afford  them. 
He  also  added  an  invention  of  small  iron  ovens,  to  be 
used  for  all  the  processes  of  cookery,  including  boiling. 
Next  he  turned  to  the  materials  for,  and  the  mode  of 
constructing,  all  kitchen  utensils,  boilers,  sauce-pans, 
stew-pans  and  their  handles,  register  stoves,  steam 
dishes  and  stoves.,  and  portable  furnaces,  with  references 
to  the  effects  of  different  kinds  of  lining  and  glazing  on 
the  taste  of  food  and  its  healthfulness ;  and  he  com- 
mends the  newly  introduced  Wedgewood  and  other 
kinds  of  earthenware. 

In  reading  these  pages,  one  can  hardly  repress  a  smile 
to  find  a  philosopher  going  into  such  details  as  does  the 
writer  on  matters  relating  wholly  to  the  appetite,  the 
flavor  of  food,  the  ways  in  which  it  is  made  palatable,  — 
how  meat  can  be  cooked  so  as  to  retain  its  rich  juices; 
how  it  can  be  roasted  in  an  oven  so  as  even  to  taste 
better  than  when  done  before  an  open  fire ;  how  to  pre- 
vent its  becoming  sodden  ;  and  the  reader  may  even  be 
made  conscious  of  a  rising  desire  within  him  to  get 
within  reach  of  the  hot  viands,  as  the  pages  tell  him 
how  the  meat  is  at  one  stage  of  the  process  to  be  deli- 
cately browned,  and  how  savory  the  fat  of  mutton  and 
beef,  and  even  venison,  may  become  in  one  of  these 
wonderful  Roasters.  The  surprise  of  the  reader,  too, 
is  enhanced  when  he  calls  to  mind  that  the  writer,  in- 
stead of  being  an  Apician  epicure,  or  a  gormand,  or  a 
critical  discriminator  in  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  for 
himself  was  remarkably  abstemious,  most  simple  in  his 


494  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

tastes,  self-denying  in,  or  rather  unconscious  of,  such 
appetites,  and  more  easily  satisfied  with  frugal,  plain 
diet  than  most  men,  while  he  was  also  positively  hostile 
to  all  banqueting.  The  reader  will  naturally  feel  that 
his  author  can  hardly  deal  so  minutely  as  he  does  with 
these  provocatives  of  sense  without  putting  in  some 
disclaimer  for  himself.  And  he  will  find  such  a  dis- 
claimer at  the  close  of  the  eighth  chapter  of  the  Essay, 
where  the  Count,  after  having  described  an  appetizing 
process  for  a  steak  or  cutlet,  adds  :  — 

"  I  imagine  it  would  be  an  excellent  dish,  and  very  whole- 
some ;  but  it  must  be  left  to  cooks  and  to  professed  judges  of 
good  eating  to  determine  whether  these  hints  (which  are  thrown 
out  with  all  becoming  humility  and  deference)  are  deserving  of 
attention.  For  although  I  have  written  a  whole  chapter  on  the 
pleasure  of  eating,  I  must  acknowledge,  what  all  my  acquaint- 
ances will  certify,  that  few  persons  are  less  attached  to  the 
pleasures  of  the  table  than  myself.  If,  in  treating  this  subject, 
I  sometimes  appear  to  do  it  con  amore,  this  warmth  of  expression 
ought,  in  justice,  to  be  ascribed  solely  to  the  sense  I  entertain  of 
its  infinite  importance  to  the  health,  happiness,  and  innocent 
enjoyments  of  mankind." 

An  interesting  reference  is  made  to  the  habits  of  the 
Chinese,  for  the  sake  of  an  example  which  the  Count 
thinks  his  own  countrymen  might  imitate. 

"  The  portable  kitchen-furnaces  in  China  are  all  constructed 
of  -earthenware  ;  and  no  people  ever  carried  those  inventions 
which  are  most  generally  useful  in  common  life  to  higher  per- 
fection than  the  Chinese.  They,  and  they  only,  of  all  the 
nations  of  whom  we  have  any  authentic  accounts,  seem  to  have 
had  a  just  idea  of  the  infinite  importance  of  those  improvements 
which  are  calculated  to  promote  the  comforts  of  the  lowest 
classes  of  society. 

"  What  immortal  glory  might  any  European  nation  obtain  by 
following  this  wise  example  ! 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  495 

"  The  Emperor  of  China,  the  greatest  monarch  in  the  world, 
who  rules  over  full  one  third  part  of  the  inhabitants  of  this 
globe,  condescends  to  hold  the  plough  himself  one  day  in  every 
year.  This  he  does,  no  doubt,  to  show  to  those,  whose  ex- 
ample never  can  fail  to  influence  the  great  bulk  of  mankind, 
how  important  that  art  is  by  means  of  which  food  is  provided. 

"  Let  those  reflect  seriously  on  this  illustrious  example  of 
provident  and  benevolent  attention  to  the  wants  of  mankind, 
who  are  disposed  to  consider  the  domestic  arrangements  of  the 
labouring  classes  as  a  subject  too  low  and  vulgar  for  their 
notice. 

"  If  attention  to  the  art  by  which  food  is  provided  be  not 
beneath  the  dignity  of  a  Great  Monarch,  that  art  by  which 
food  is  prepared  for  use,  and  by  which  it  may  be  greatly  econo- 
mised, cannot  possibly  be  unworthy  of  the  attention  of  those 
who  take  pleasure  in  promoting  the  happiness  of  mankind." 

Not  wholly  insensible  to  the  flippant  .badinage  with 
which  portions  of  his  economical  projects  were  treated 
in  some  quarters,  nor  to  the  impatience  with  which  his 
prolixity  and  minuteness  of  detail  in  very  homely  coun- 
sels were  received  by  many,  the  Count  remonstrates 
with  dignity,  while  he  still  keeps  to  his  own  chosen 
method.  He  says  he  is  willing  to  be  judged  by  the 
more  intelligent  of  his  readers,  and  feels  that  they  will 
appreciate  his  motive  in  mingling  abstruse  philosophical 
researches  and  the  results  of  profound  meditation  with 
the  explanation  of  most  humble  and  ordinary  subjects. 
He  says :  — 

"  I  am  not  unacquainted  with  the  manners  of  the  age.  I 
have  lived  much  in  the  world,  and  have  studied  mankind 
attentively  ;  I  am  fully  aware  of  all  the  difficulties  I  have  to 
encounter  in  the  pursuit  of  the  great  object  to  which  I  have 
devoted  myself.  I  am  even  sensible,  fully  sensible,  of  the 
dangers  to  which  I  expose  myself.  In  this  selfish  and  sus- 
picious age  it  is  hardly  possible  that  justice  should  be  done  to 


496  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

the  purity  of  my  motives  ;  and  in  the  present  state  of  society, 
when  so  few  who  have  leisure  can  bring  themselves  to  take 
the  trouble  to  read  anything  except  it  be  for  mere  amusement,  I 
can  hardly  expect  to  engage  attention.  I  may  write,  but  what 
will  writing  avail  if  nobody  will  read  ?  My  bookseller,  indeed, 
will  not  be  ruined  as  long  as  it  shall  continue  to  be  fashionable 
to  \\avz  fine  libraries.  But  my  object  will  not  be  attained  unless 
my  writings  are  read,  and  the  importance  of  the  subjects  of  my 
investigations  is  felt. 

"  Persons  who  have  been  satiated  with  indulgences  and  luxu- 
ries of  every  kind  are  sometimes  tempted  by  the  novelty  of  an 
untried  pursuit.  My  best  endeavours  shall  not  be  wanting  to 
give  to  the  objects  I  recommend,  not  only  all  the  alluring 
charms  of  novelty,  but  also  the  power  of  procuring  a  pleasure  as 
new,  perhaps,  as  it  is  pure  and  lasting. 

"  How  might  I  exult  could  I  but  succeed  so  far  as  to  make 
it  fashionable  for  the  rich  to  take  the  trouble  to  choose  for  them- 
selves those  enjoyments  which  their  money  can  command,  in- 
stead of  being  the  dupes  of  those  tyrants  who,  in  the  garb  of 
submissive,  fawning  slaves,  not  only  plunder  them  in  the  most 
disgraceful  manner,  but  render  them  at  the  same  time  perfectly 
ridiculous,  and  fit  for  that  destruction  which  is  always  near  at 
hand,  when  good  taste  has  been  driven  quite  off  the  stage. 

"  When  I  see,  in  the  capital  of  a  great  country,  in  the  midst 
of  summer,  a  coachman  sitting  on  a  coach-box  dressed  in  a 
thick,  heavy  great-coat  with  sixteen  capes,  I  am  not  surprised  to 
find  the  coach-door  surrounded  by  a  group  of  naked  beggars. 

"  We  should  tremble  at  such  appearances,  did  not  the  short- 
ness of  life  and  the  extreme  infirmity  of  the  human  character 
render  us  insensible  to  dangers  while  at  any  distance,  however 
great  and  impending  and  inevitable  they  may  be." 

Again  he  writes  :  — 

"  In  justice  it  ought  always  to  be  remembered  that  my  object 
in  writing  is,  professedly,  to  be  useful,  and  that  I  lay  no  claim 
to  the  applause  of  those  delicate  and  severe  judges  of  literary 
composition  who  read  more  with  a  view  to  being  pleased  by  fine 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  497 

writing  than  to  acquire  information.  If  those  who  are  quick  of 
apprehension  are  sometimes  tempted  to  find  fault  with  me  for 
being  too  particular,  they  must  remember  that  it  is  not  given  to 
all  to  be  quick  of  apprehension,  and  that  it  is  amiable  to  have 
patience,  and  to  be  indulgent." 

When  Lord  Brougham,  as  quoted  on  a  previous 
page,  satirized  the  Count  for  giving  such  particular 
directions  about  the  proper  way  of  eating  Indian  pud- 
ding, his  Lordship  must  have  overlooked  a  passage 
in  this  Essay  even  more  to  his  purpose  as  an  illus- 
tration. After  the  Count  has  described  most  elabo- 
rately how  stewpans  and  saucepans  should  be  shaped, 
how  their  rims  should  be  turned  and  their  handles 
riveted,  he  adds :  "  There  should  be  a  round  hole 
about  a  quarter  of  an  inch  in  diameter,  near  the  end 
of  the  handle,  by  which  the  saucepan  may  occasionally 
be  hung  upon  a  nail  or  peg,  when  it  is  not  in  use.  The 
cover  belonging  to  the  saucepan  may  be  hung  up  on 

the  same  nail,  or  peg,  by  means  of  the.  projection  of  its 

j> 
rim. 

The  Count,  of  course,  realized  that  one  of  the  effects 
of  the  introduction  of  his  improvements  in  household 
and  kitchen  utensils  would  be  to  render  unsalable 
many  manufactured  articles  then  in  the  market,  and 
to  excite  the  opposition  of  self-interest  among  many 
artisans.  So  he  writes  :  — 

"  However  anxious  I  am  to  promote  useful  improvements, 
and  especially  such  as  tend  to  the  preservation  of  health  and 
the  increase  of  rational  enjoyments,  it  always  gives  me  pain 
when  I  recollect  how  impossible  it  is  to  introduce  anything  new, 
however  useful  it  may  be  to  society  at  large,  without  occasion- 
ing a  temporary  loss  or  inconvenience  to  some  certain  indi- 
viduals whose  interest  it  is  to  preserve  the  state  of  things 
actually  existing. 
32 


49 8  Life  of  Count  Ritinford. 

"  It  certainly  requires  some  courage,  and  perhaps  no  small 
share  of  enthusiasm,  to  stand  forth  the  voluntary  champion  of 
the  public  good.  But  this  is  a  melancholy  reflection  on  which 
I  never  suffer  my  mind  to  dwell.  There  is  no  saying  what  the 
consequences  might  be  were  we  always  to  sit  down  before  we 
engage  in  a  laudable  undertaking  and  meditate  profoundly  upon 
all  the  dangers  and  difficulties  that  are  inseparably  connected 
with  it.  The  most  ardent  zeal  might  perhaps  be  damped,  and 
the  warmest  benevolence  discouraged.  But  the  enterprising 
seldom  regard  dangers,  and  are  never  dismayed  by  them  ;  and 
they  consider  difficulties  but  to  see  how  they  are  to  be  over- 
come. To  them  activity  alone  is  life,  and  their  glorious  reward 
the  consciousness  of  having  done  well.  Their  sleep  is  sweet 
when  the  labours  of  the  day  are  over,  and  they  await  with  placid 
composure  that  rest  which  is  to  put  a  final  end  to  all  their 
labours  and  to  all  their  sufferings. " 

There  is  also  a  fine  passage  in  the  beginning  of  -the 
thirteenth  chapter  of  this  Essay. 

"  Amongst  the  great  variety  of  enjoyments  which  riches  put 
within  the  reach  of  persons  of  fortune  and  education,  there  is 
none  more  delightful  than  that  which  results  from  doing  good 
to  those  from  whom  no  return  can  be  expected,  or  none  but 
gratitude,  respect,  and  attachment.  What  exquisite  pleasure, 
then,  must  it  afford,  to  collect  the  scattered  rays  of  useful  science 
and  direct  them,  united,  to  objects  of  general  utility  !  to  throw 
them  in  a  broad  beam  on  the  cold  and  dreary  habitations  of  the 
poor,  spreading  cheerfulness  and  comfort  all  around  ! 

"  Is  it  not  possible  to  draw  off  the  attention  of  the  rich  from 
trifling  and  unprofitable  amusements  and  engage  them  in  pur- 
suits in  which  their  own  happiness  and  reputation  and  the  public 
prosperity  are  so  intimately  connected  ?  What  a  wonderful 
change  in  the  state  of  society  might  in  a  short  time  be  effected 
by  their  united  efforts  ! 

"It  is  hardly  possible  for  the  condition  of  the  lower  classes  of 
society  to  be  essentially  improved  without  that  kind  and  friendly 
assistance  which  none  can  afford  them  but  the  rich  and  the 


Life  of  Coiint  Rumford.  499 

benevolent.  They  must  be  taught,  and  who  is  there  in  whom 
they  have  confidence  that  will  take  the  trouble  to  instruct 
them  ?  They  cannot  learn  from  books,  for  they  have  not  time 
to  read  ;  and  if  they  had,  how  few  of  them  would  be  able,  from 
a  written  description,  to  comprehend  what  they  ought  to  know  ! 
If  I  write  for  their  instruction,  it  is  to  the  rich  that  I  must 
address  myself,  and  if  I  am  not  able  to  engage  them  to  assist  me 
all  my  labours  will  be  in  vain." 

Again  he  writes  :  — 

"  Whenever  I  sit  down  to  write,  I  feel  my  mind  deeply  im- 
pressed with  a  sense  of  the  respect  which  I  owe,  as  an  indi- 
vidual, to  the  public,  to  whom  I  presume  to  address  myself,  and 
often  consider  how  blameable  it  would  be  in  me,  especially 
when  I  am  endeavouring  to  recommend  economy,  to  trifle  with 
the  time  of  thousands. 

"  Too  much  pains  cannot  be  taken  by  those  who  write  books 
to  render  their  ideas  clear,  and  their  language  concise  and  easy 
to  be  understood. 

"  Hours  spent  by  an  author  in  saving  minutes,  or  even  seconds, 
to  his  readers,  is  time  well  employed." 

The  Count  had  bestowed  great  pains  and  much  time 
in  planning,  constructing,  and  improving  a  gridiron  grate, 
with  its  appurtenances,  for  the  use  of  those  in  narrow 
circumstances.  When,  by  many  experiments,  he  had 
satisfied  himself  with  the  exactness  of  his  patterns,  he 
had.  castings  taken  from  them  by  the  best  London 
founders.  Of  these  he  made  a  present  to  the  Carron 
Company,  at  their  works  in  Scotland,  on  his  journey 
there  in  the  autumn  of  1800.  At  the  same  time  he 
made  a  contract  with  the  company  to  furnish  the  articles 
at  their  warehouse  in  London  at  the  lowest  reasonable 
price,  that  gentlemen  might  buy  them  by  the  dozen  for 
distribution  to  the  poor. 

I  have   made  these   large   extracts  from  the  Count's 


5 co  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

tenth  Essay,  as  a  substitute  for  any  extended  com- 
ments or  suggestions  of  my  own,  that  I  may  give 
the  reader  the  means  of  forming  an  instructed  opinion 
of  the  chief  motives,  the  sagacious  methods,  the  be- 
nevolent spirit,  and  the  actual  practical  work  of  its 
author.  We  have  in  these  extracts  as  candid  exposi- 
tions of  himself  as  it  is  possible  for  a  man  to  make. 
If  there  is  discernible  in  them  some  traces  of  human 
infirmity  in  the  betrayal  of  a  consciousness  of  good 
desert,  or  in  the  falling  back  upon  a  self-appreciation 
in  amends  for  the  lack  of  expected  commendation  from 
others,  such  weakness  will  be  sufficiently  allowed  for 
by  the  mere  recognition  of  it.  The  following  sentences 
will  properly  give  us  a  summing  up  of  the  matter : 
cc  Whether  the  reader  agrees  with  me  or  not,  I  hope 
and  trust  that  he  will  do  me  the  justice  to  believe 
that  I  have  no  wish  so  much  at  my  heart  as  to  render 
my  labours  of  some  real  and  lasting  utility  to  mankind. 
How  happy  shall  I  be,  when  I  come  to  die,  if  I  can 
then  think  that  I  have  lived  to  some  useful  pur- 
pose !  "  ; 

Professor  Renwick,  in  his  Life  of  Count  Rumford, 
prepared  for  Sparks's  American  Biography,  records  a 
fact  which  ought  to  find  mention  here.  After  referring 
to  the  Count's  efforts  and  plans  for  the  improvement 
of  the  grates  used  in  England  for  burning  coal,  the 
Professor  says  that  his  principles,  soon  after  they  were 
published,  reached  a  degree  of  development  in  the 
United  States  beyond  that  to  which  they  were  carried 
by  the  Count  himself,  or  had  attained  half  a  century 
subsequently  in  the  mother  country.  When  the  Count's 
Essay  reached  New  York,  owing  to  the  exhaustion  of 
the  neighboring  forests  and  the  high  price  of  firewood, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  501 

bituminous  coal  from  Liverpool  had  come  into  general 
use,  the  vapor  and  soot  from  which,  as  then  burned, 
were  a  great  annoyance.  The  Professor  adds  :  — 

"  It  is  due  to  the  persons  concerned  in  the  introduction  of  the 
use  of  this  description  of  fuel  into  the  United  States,  and  of 
Rumford's  plans  and  principles  for  its  cleanly  and  economic  use, 
that  they  should  be  commemorated  while  those  who  witnessed 
their  experiments  and  efforts  still  live  to  record  them.  To 
fulfil  this  grateful  task,  we  may  therefore  state  that  the  first 
range  for  cooking  with  coal  was  imported  and  set  up  by  Wil- 
liam Renwick,  in  1796;  and  that  in  1798  it  was  lined  with 
fire-brick,  in  conformity  with  Rumford's  principles,  under  the 
direction  of  Professor  John  Kemp,  of  Columbia  College;  that 
a  Rumford  kitchen  was  put  up  by  Isaac  Gouverneur  in  1798; 
and  that  parlor  grates  were  planned  and  the  details  of  their 
setting  pointed  out  to  the  mechanics  who  executed  them,  by 
David  Gordon,  —  afterwards,  on  his  return  to  England  in  1808, 
distinguished  as  an  engineer,  and  for  his  mode  of  rendeiing  gas 
portable  for  the  purposes  of  illumination." 

In  a  very  short  Essay,  numbered  as  the  eleventh,  the 
Count  offers  "  Observations  concerning  Open  Chimney 
Fireplaces."  He  found  that  his  own  reputation  and 
the  improvements  which  he  had  proposed  in  these  con- 
structions —  as  in  the  use  of  his  roasters  —  had  suffered, 
during  his  two  years'  absence  in  Germany,  by  the  care- 
lessness and  other  faults  of  the  workmen  who  had  been 
employed  in  altering  old  fireplaces  or  fitting  up  new 
ones.  He  designates  the  mistakes  and  the  consequences 
which  have  resulted  from  them,  and  he  insists  upon 
the  absolute  necessity  of  strict  adherence,  without  devia- 
tion, to  the  directions,  measurements,  and  proportions 
which  he  had  prescribed. 

More  annoying   still   was   another  experience   which 

*  Sparks's  Library  of  American  Biography,  Second  Series,  Vol.  V.  p.  134. 


502  Life  of  Co2int  Rumford. 

the  Count  endured  as  he  walked  the  streets  of  London 
and  read  the  placards  and  advertisements  in  the  jour- 
nals. He  found  his  own  name  attached  to  many  boasted 
improvements  announced  to  the  public,  in  connection 
with  certain  stoves,  grates,  etc.,  that  were  exposed  for 
sale.  The  name  of  Rumford  had  become  a  synonyme 
of  Reform.  He  wished  to  preserve  it  from  contact 
with  quackery  or  fraud.  He  adverts,  but  very  mildly, 
to  this  annoyance  in  this  Essay,  as  follows  :  — 

"  As  I  am  extremely  anxious  not  to  injure  any  man, 
either  in  his  reputation  for  ingenuity,  or  in  liis  trade,  or 
in  any  other  way,  I  shall  not  say  one  word  more  on 
this  s-ubject  than  what  I  feel  it  to  be  my  duty  to  the 
public  to  declare,  namely,  that  I  am  not  the  inventor 
of  any  of  those  stoves  or  grates  that  have  been  offered 
to  the  public  for  sale,  under  my  name." 

The  twelfth  Essay,  which  also  is  very  brief,  is  entitled 
cc  Of  the  Salubrity  of  Warm  Rooms,"  of  which  the 
Count  shows  himself  a  most  earnest  champion.  He 
draws  the  distinction  between  fresh  or  cold  air,  and  pure 
or  wholesome  air.  He  exposes  the  folly  of  sitting  in  a 
room  which  has  a  large  blazing  open  fire  roasting  one 
side  of  the  body,  while  blasts  of  cold  air  are  coursing  the 
apartment ;  and  he  explains  the  remarkable  fact  that  we 
are  not  capable  of  feeling,  or  rather  are  not  conscious  of 
feeling,  both  heat  and  cold  at  the  same  time,  though  we 
are  really  subject  to  them.  He  shows  how  streams  of 
cold  air  are  always  pernicious,  and  that  the  danger  from 
them  is  greatest  when  we  are  least  sensible  of  it.  He 
insists  that  sudden  changes  from  hot  rooms  to  the  cold 
air,  so  far  from  being  dangerous  to  health,  are  harmless, 
as  well  as  often  pleasurable,  —  confirming  his  position 
by  the  examples  of  the  Swedes  and  Russians,  who, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  503 

while  living  in  the  coldest  climates,  keep  their  apart- 
ments very  warm.  He  says  that  a  warm  room,  by  pro- 
moting a  free  circulation  of  the  blood,  gives  the  health 
and  vigor  which  are  necessary  in  order  to  support  with- 
out injury  occasional  exposure  to  intense  cold.  The 
philosopher  speaks  in  the  following  paragraph  :  — 

"There  is  a  simple  experiment,  easily  made  and  no  wise 
dangerous,  which  shows,  in  a  sensible  and  convincing  manner, 
that  warmth  prepares  the  body  to  bear  occasional  cold  without 
pain  and  without  injury.  Let  a  person  in  health,  rising  from  a 
warm  bed,  affer  a  good  night's  rest,  in  cold  weather,  put  on  a 
dry  warm  shirt,  and,  dressing  himself  merely  in  his  drawers, 
stockings,  and  slippers,  let  him  go  into  a  room  in  which  there 
is  no  fire,  and  walk  leisurely  about  the  room  for  half  an  hour;  or 
let  him  sit  down  and  write  or  read  during  that  time.  He  will 
find  himself  able  to  support  this  trial  without  the  smallest  incon- 
venience. The  cold  to  which  he  exposes  himself  will  hardly 
be  felt,  and  no  bad  consequences  to  his  health  will  result  from 
the  experiment.  Let  him  now  repeat  this  experiment  under 
different  circumstances.  In  the  evening  of  a  chilly  day,  and 
when  he  is  shivering  with  cold,  let  him  undress  himself  to  his 
shirt,  and  see  how  long  he  will  be  able  to  support  exposure  to 
the  air  in  a  cold  room  in  that  light  dress." 

The  Count  likewise  repeats  the  assertion  made  to 
him  by  Dr.  Blane,  an  eminent  London  physician,  that 
persons  who  had  lived  for  years  in  the  hot  climates  of 
India,  returning  to  reside  in  England,  did  not  feel  in- 
convenience from  the  cold  of  its  climate  nearly  so  much 
in  the  first  year  as  they  did  in  the  second,  after  their 
return.  If  they  could  be  persuaded  to  have  warm 
rooms  and  freely  use  the  warm  bath,  they  would  never 
out  of  doors  suffer  any  inconvenience,  and  might  exer- 
cise much  more  freely. 

The  Count's  thirteenth  Essay,  "On  the  Salubrity  of 


504  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Warm  Bathing,"  has  already  been  noticed  in  another 
connection. 

The  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  Essays,  respectively 
"  Of  the  Management  of  Fires  in  Closed  Fireplaces  " 
and  "  Of  the  Use  of  Steam  as  a  Vehicle  for  Trans- 
porting Heat,"  are  substantially  additions  to  the  matter 
of  the  tenth  Essay.  They  give  practical  information 
of  high  value  in  all  culinary  and  in  many  mechanical 
processes.  In  the  former  of  the  two  will  be  found  one 
of  those  very  candid  confessions  which  the  writer,  on 
occasions  for  them,  was  always  ready  to  give,  of  mis- 
takes which  he  had  himself  made  in  some  previous  con- 
clusions. He  renders  honorable  amends  to  a  cook  who 
was  the  medium  of  teaching  him  his  error  and  the  way 
to  truth. 

The  use  of  steam,  according  to  the  method  which  the 
Count  suggested,  is  now  almost  universally  adopted  in 
the  kitchens  and  wash-houses  of  public  institutions,  and 
in  dye-houses  and  breweries,  where  pipes  are  made  to 
convey  heat  to  large  wooden  vats  or  tubs  at  a  vast  sav- 
ing of  time,  fuel,  and  labor. 

Mention  has  already  been  made,  on  a  previous  page, 
that  Count  Rumford's  efforts,  publications,  and  schemes 
to  provide  nutritious  food,  and  to  secure  an  economical 
use  of  its  materials,  were  all  brought  to  public  notice  in 
England  at  a  period  of  general  scarcity,  and  when  there 
were  even  well-founded  apprehensions  of  famine.  In 
the  very  important  and  exciting  debate  on  the  Corn  and 
Bread  Bill  before  Parliament  in  1800,  I  find  that  the 
Count  was  most  honorably  and  gratefully  named  for  his 
valuable  labors  and  counsels.  Both  Lord  Hawkesbury 
and  Mr.  Wilberforce  passed  upon  him  the  highest  en- 
comiums as  a  public  benefactor.  In  connection  with 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  505 

his  name,  tney  mention  another  eminent  philanthropist, 
Arthur  Young.* 

On  a  subsequent  page  I  shall  have  occasion  to  quote 
the  words  of  a  most  eminent  scientific  man,  an  associate 
of  Rumford,  to  whom  he  was  at  first  indebted  for 
favors,  but  against  whom  he  afterwards  seems  to  have 
conceived  a  dislike,  to  the  effect  that  at  this  time  the 
Count  was  much  mortified  at  being  "the  object  of  the 
impertinent  attacks  of  a  popular  satirist."  The  refer- 
ence, undoubtedly,  is  to  that  most  sharp-spoken  and 
virulent  of  political,  literary,  and  social  Ishmaelites, 
William  Cobbett,  whose  voluminous  Register  was  in 
alternate  volumes  the  vehicle  of  laudation  and  of  objur- 
gation directed  towards  the  same  persons,  according  to 
the  mood  and  temporary  objects  of  the  satirist.  Cob- 
bett spent  all  the  force  of  his  ridicule  and  invective 
against  Rumford' s  project  of  soup-houses  for  the  poor. 
Doubtless  the  Count  was,  on  this  subject,  somewhat 
oblivious  or  disregardful  of  a  characteristic  distinction 
between  the  habits  and  tastes  of  the  Germans  and  the 
French  on  the  one  side,  and  the  English  on  the  other, 
touching  the  composition,  quality,  and  preparation  of 
their  food.  The  distinction  continues  to  this  day,  and 
is  observable,  if  not  sometimes  mo're  than  observable, 
by  every  traveller  between  England  and  the  Continent. 
In  France  and  Germany  it  would  seem  as  if  the  more 
of  a  mess,  and  of  a  compound  in  which  the  several  in- 
gredients of  the  mixture  do  not  appear,  was  set  before 
the  natives  as  food,  in  the  shape  of  a  soup  or  stew,  the 
more  acceptable  the  contents  of  the  dish  would  be.  In 
England,  on  the  other  hand,  the  hungry  man,  even 
when  not  dainty,  loves  to  know  what  he  is  eating,  is 

*  Annual  Register,  Vol.  XLII.  pp.  13°,  '3  3- 


.506  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

suspicious  of  composite  fabrics,  and  prefers  to  see 
a  whole  joint  or  a  cut,  which  will  indicate  from  what 
source  it  was  derived.  Soup-maigre,  the  solace  and  sus- 
tenance of  many  a  French  peasant  and  household,  is 
an  especial  horror  to  an  Englishman.  Now  it  is  not 
to  be  denied  that  Rumford  depended  very  largely  upon, 
and  wrote  very  largely  in  the  interest  of,  these  lym- 
phatic and  often  bilious  compounds;  even  that  word,. 
tc  compound,"  seems  rather  too  substantial  to  be  applied 
to  the  products  of  some  of  his  recipes.  He  did,  however, 
recommend,  with  great  success,  the  establishment  of 
public  soup-houses,  where  his  cheap,  but  as  he  con- 
tended nutritive,  if  not  always  palatable,  concoctions 
could  be  dispensed  to  the  poor.  He  also  sought  to 
induce  those  who  were  not  needy,  and  even  some  of  his 
rich  friends,  to  avail  themselves  of  such  public  dispensa- 
tions, with  the  aim  and  to  the  extent  of  giving  them 
their  patronage  and  approval,  so  as  to  be  induced  after- 
wards in  their  own  families  to  practise  an  economy  in 
the  use  of  what  was  often  thrown  away. " 

Cobbett  chose  to  represent  the  Count's  devices  of  this 
sort  as  an  aggravation  of  the  indifference  and  heartless- 
ness  sometimes  disguised  under  the  schemes  and  meas- 
ures for  relieving  the  poor.  Dr.  Johnson's  famous 
definition  of  oafs,  as  expressing  on  the  English  side 
of  the  border  the  food  of  horses,  and  on  the  Scotch 
side  the  food  of  human  beings,  was  not  so  sharp  as 
were  Cobbett's  sarcasms  cast  upon  Rumford's  thin 
soups.  He  insisted  on  representing  it  as  an  outrage 
upon  Englishmen  that  whatever  the  degree  of  their 
poverty,  and  however  nearly  they  approached  starva- 
tion, they  should  have  offered  to  them,  in  the  name  of 
science  and  charity,  the  insipid  and  flatulent  compounds 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  507 

which  he  chose  to  ridicule  as  actually  the  products  of 
the  philosophic  philanthropist's  recipes.  "  Dirt  and 
bones  "  were  the  terms  which  he  applied  to  the  prof- 
fered soups.  He -was  willing  that  Irishmen,  should  eat 
potatoes,  but  Englishmen  were  worthy  of  something 
better.  He,  however,  displayed  his  own  ignorance 
when  he  represented  even  an  insipid  compound  as 
necessarily  without  nutrition,  or  failed  to  recognize  the 
fact  that  a  bone  may  contain  more  invigorating  matter 
than  a  piece  of  solid  muscular  meat  of  the  same  weight. 
The  satirist  was  successful  to  a  great  degree  in  bringing 
reproach  upon  a  well-intended  and  beneficent  scheme. 
The  soup-houses  fell  into  disrepute,  and  the  result  was, 
to  an  unfortunate  degree,  somewhat  unfavorable  to  the 
whole  scheme  and  method  by  which  Count  Rumford 
had  endeavored  to  reorganize  and  administer  public 
charity. 

More  recently  a  writer  in  Blackwood's  Magazine,* 
in  a  satirical  article  on  "  Panaceas  for  Poverty,"  has 
found  matter  for  raillery  and  jesting  in  the  purely 
humane  and  benevolent  methods  proposed  by  Count 
Rumford  for  the  relief  of  stern  suffering  in  a  time  of 
prevailing  scarcity.  It  is  well  to  keep  in  mind  the  fact, 
that  all  bantering  and  trifling,  on  the  part  of  those  who 
enjoy  the  comforts  or  revel  in  the  easy  luxuries  of  life, 
with  the  appliances  brought  to  bear,  however  inade- 
quately, for  the  relief  of  destitution,  are  apt  to  be 
regarded  by  the  poor  as  a  heartless  mockery  of  their 
condition. 

In  connection  with  Count  Rumford's  philanthropic 
labors,  especially  those  referred  to  in  preceding  pages, 
which  led  him,  from  the  combined  results  of  his  own 

*  Vol.  XIV.  p.  637. 


508  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

practical  experiments  and  the  theories  suggested  to 
him  as  to  the  organizing  of  a  wisely  benevolent  plan, 
to  present  a  new  method  for  the  systematic  relief  of  the 
poor,  I  have  to  mention  a  fact  of  "much  interest.  I 
can  well  conceive  that  the  Count  himself  would  regard 
this  fact  as  perhaps  the  most  grateful  of  all  the  tributes 
that  have  been  paid  to  the  labors  of  his  life  or  to  his 
memory. 

In  a  note  which  is  a  part  of  a  correspondence  on 
another  subject,  my  friend,  Mr.  Thomas  C.  Amory, 
lately  an  alderman  of  the  city  of  Boston,  and  one  of 
the  most  discreet  and  earnest  among  those  who  have 
administered  the  municipal  charities,  writes  to  me  the 
following  sentences,  just  as  I  have  before  me  the  closing 
page  of  this  chapter. 

"  Pardon  me  if  I  venture  to  call  to  your  attention  the  fact, 
that  those  of  us,  including  the  Hon.  R.  C.  Winthrop,  who 
took  part  in  organizing  the  present  system  of  relief  of  the  poor 
in  Boston  with  the  Industrial  Aid  Society  and  Provident 
Association  under  the  same  roof,  did  not  lose  sight  of  the 
example  of  Count  Rumford  at  Munich.  By  permission  of  the 
Board,  I  purchased  for  its  use  a  copy  of  his  works.  It  might  be 
worth  your  while,  before  completing  your  work,  to  take  a  look 
at  the  books  and  pigeon-holes  of  the  Chardon  Street  building 
[the  magnificent  and  commodious  structure  recently  prepared 
by  the  city  for  the  administration  of  many  of  its  charities].  The 
system,  of  course,  is  still  in  its  infancy,  and  has  much  progress 
to  make  before  it  approximates  perfection.  But  its  aim  is  the 
same  as  Rumford's,  —  to  render  the  poor  self-sustaining  by  find- 
ing them  work. 

"  It  sometimes  occurs  to  me,  that,  as  Rumford  was  of  our 
neighborhood,  his  statue  or  bust  would  be  a  fitting  decoration 
for  the  blank-wall  space  of  the  building  over  the  entrance.  He 
was  pre-eminently  a  philanthropist,  and  of  the  best  sort,  seeking 
practical  ends  in  improving  the  condition  of  his  fellow-men. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  509 

And  though  his  efforts  to  reform  pauperism  and  mendicity 
found  their  principal  field  abroad,  and  this  was  but  one  of  many 
ways  in  which  he  sought  to  be  of  use,  the  results  by  example 
belong  to  the  world,  and  our  Chardon  Street  building,  the  first 
of  its  kind,  would  not  seem  an  inappropriate  place  to  do  honor 
to  one  whose  fame  belongs  especially  to  Massachusetts,  and  to 
Boston  as  its  capital." 


CHAPTER     IX. 

Countess  Rumford  in  America.  —  Correspondence.  —  Letters 
from  her  Father.  —  Their  Fate.  —  Friendship  and  Let- 
ters of  Sir  Charles  Elagden.  —  His  Report  of  the  Count's 
Matrimonial  Purposes.  —  His  Confidential  Correspondence. 

—  Information  concerning  Count  Rumford.  —  Breach  of 
Intercourse.  —  The  Count  at  Munich  and  Paris.  —  His 
Tour  with  Madame  Lavoisier.  —  Safatis  Account  and 
Description  of  her  Father.  —  His  Letters  from  England 
and  Bavaria.  —  He  writes  to  his  Daughter  of  his  In- 
tended Marriage,  and  sends  for  Legal  Documents.  —  His 
Marriage  to  Madame  Lavoisier.  —  Happy  Prospects.  — 
Letters  from  Colonel  Baldwin.  — Letter  from  Sir  Charles 
Elagden.  —  Unhappiness  of  the  Count  in  his  Marriage. 

—  His  Letters  continued.  —  Separates  from  his  Wife.  — 
Sarah 's  Explanation.  —  The  Count  sends  for  his  Daugh- 
ter. —  His  Letters  while  awaiting  her  Arrival.  —  His 
Visit   to   Munich   and  Welcome    Reception.  —  Monsieur 
Guizofs  Memoir  of  Madame  de  Rumford.  —  Tribute  to 
her  by  the  Comtesse  de  Eassanville. 

IN  giving  as  full  and  accurate  an  account  as  is  possible 
of  the  events  and  the  labors  of  Count  Rumford's 
life,  from  his  leaving  England  for  the  last  time  till  his 
death,  I  shall  be  indebted  chiefly  for  my  materials  to 
papers  left  by  his  daughter.  These  will  be  found  to 
have  a  curious,  and  in  many  respects  a  painful  interest, 
as  they  give  in  such  detail  the  particulars  of  a  new 
domestic  relation  formed  by  him,  which  promised  him 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  511 

much  happiness,  but  which  resulted  in  alienation  and 
disappointment,  and,  it  would  seem,  in  clouding  and 
imbittering  the  last  years  of  the  Count's  existence. 
I  shall  follow  the  daughter's  rehearsal  of  these  ex- 
periences, and  then  gather  from  other  sources  such 
illustrative  information  as  is  within  my  reach. 

As  regards  the  daughter  herself,  in  the  interval  that 
elapsed  after  her  return  to  America,  and  before  she 
joined  her  father  again  in  Europe,  I  have  several  inter- 
esting matters  to  communicate.  The  Count's  mother 
had  removed  with  her  husband  to  Maine  before  Sarah's 
return.  .This  led  the  granddaughter  to  make  frequent 
visits  to  that  State,  in  which,  while  visiting  aunts  and 
cousins,  she  made  many  acquaintances  and  friends  in 
Portland,  Brunswick,  Flintstown,  etc.  Indeed,  it  would 
seem  as  if  she  had  no  settled  abiding-place,  and  became 
quite  reconciled  to,  if  not  fond  of,  a  roaming  life,  which 
made  her  the  guest  of  many  hospitable  homes.  I  have 
before  me  many  letters  of  hers  to  female  friends,  and 
they  are  largely  occupied  with  affairs  of  the  heart.  Her 
father's  distinctions  and  reputation  would  have  secured 
her  attentions,  even  apart  from  her  own  recommenda- 
tion of  herself  by  her  natural  or  acquired  attractions. 
We  have  seen  that  she  considered  herself  unfitted  for  a 
quiet  and  simple  life  in  a  country  village,  or  even  in 
a  populous  town  in  her  native  land,  and  that  her  for- 
eign adventures  made  her  crave  a  renewal  of  their  ex- 
citements. 

Here  is  a  pleasant  note  of  hers  to  her  father's  friend, 
Colonel  Baldwin. 

"BOSTON,  October  15,  1799. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  "You  were  so  good  as  to  say  that  you  would 
carry  me  to  Woburn  any  time.  I  should  like  to  go.  If  you 


512  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

could  conveniently  call  or  send  for  me  on  Wednesday  next,  I 
think  upon  the  whole  I  should  like  to  go.  If  you  can  call  to 
see  me  before  that  time,  and  can  bring  Miss  Clarissa  [Miss 
Baldwin],  I  should  be  gratified,  for  I  want  to  see  her  very 
much.  I  never  knew  till  I  read  the  letter  you  was  so  kind  as 
to  leave  me  yesterday,  that  you  had  a  little  son.*  I  feel  quite 
impatient  to  see  him,  and  if  you  could  contrive  to  bring  him 
with  Clarissa  I  should  be  very  glad. 
"  Believe  me  with  much  respect, 

"  Your  much  obliged 

"SARAH   RUMFORD." 

Count  Rumford's  stepfather,  Mr.  Josiah  Pierce,  had 
died  in  August,  1798. 

The  letter  that  follows  from  Colonel  Baldwin  to  the 
Countess  was  probably  addressed  to  her  while  she  was 
residing  in  apartments  in  Boston  :  — 

"  WOBURN,  September  27,  1800. 

"  MY  DEAR  COUNTESS,  —  Yours  by  the  stage,  I  received 
yesterday.  Your  grandmamma  arrived  at  my  house  last  Saturday 
in  good  health,  and  tarried  with  us  until  Monday,  when  she 
went  to  her  sister  Simonds,  perhaps  to  visit  her  relations  in 
Woburn,  and  then  to  go  to  Boston.  Perhaps  you  may  see  her 
the  beginning  of  next  week.  Miss  Clarissa  skipped  upon  read- 
ing your  kind  invitation  to  make  a  visit  just  as  her  brother 
Cyrus  was  setting  out  for  Boston  this  morning  in  a  sulky.  The 
scheme  was  started  for  her  to  go  with  him,  and  the  experiment 
to  see  if  she  could  ride  in  that  way  was  made.  The  result  was 

*  This,  now  the  only  surviving  son  of  Colonel  Baldwin,  is  George  Rumford  Bald- 
win, Esq.,  of  Woburn,  Massachusetts,  who,  with  the  genius  and  skill  characteristic 
of  his  family,  is  one  of  the  most  eminent  engineers  in  the  United  States ;  his  father 
having  planned  and  engineered  the  Middlesex  Canal ;  his  brother  Loammi  having 
constructed  the  United  States  naval  dry  docks  at  Charlestown,  Massachusetts,  and 
Norfolk,  Virginia  ;  and  his  brother  James  F.  having  given  his  science  to  the  Co- 
chituate  Water-Works  of  Boston.  The  present  representative  of  the  family  was 
the  engineer  of  the  water-works  of  Quebec,  Canada,  and  of  Charlestown,  Massa- 
chusetts. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

favorable  to  her  wishes,  and  she  was  ready  before  I  could 
scribble  this  line.  They  are  now  both  waiting,  and  the  morn- 
ing lowering.  I  must  defer  my  observations  on  the  feeling  you 
express  in  inhabiting  your  new  mansion.  I  hope,  and  still 
think  you  will  prefer  Woburn,  for  to  spend  half  the  year  at 
least. 

"  I  am,  my  dear  Countess, 

"  Yours  sincerely, 

"LOAMMI   BALDWIN." 

In  a  letter  from  Concord,  to  a  female  friend  in 
Boston,  dated  November  5,  1801,  referring  to  her  good 
purposes  of  industrious  occupation  for  that  winter, 
Sarah  writes  :  "  I  should  not  so  much  mind  spend- 
ing my  time  idly,  if  I  had  no  one  to  please  but  my- 
self. My  father  is  very  active  himself,  and  usefully 
active;  and  he  highly  disapproves  of  the  manner  in 
which  I  pass  my  time.  He  has  proved  a  kind,  good 
father  to  me,  and  in  return  for  his  kindness  I  ought 
to  do  everything  in  my  power  to  please  him.  He  is 
extravagantly  fond  of  drawing,  and  thinks  if  I  have  a 
talent  for  anything  it  is  for  that ;  and  often  reproaches 
me  for  not  attending  to  it  more  than  what  I  do/' 

Readers,  I  feel  sure,  will  not  expect  or  desire  from  me 
any  apology  for  the  use  which  I  am  now  to  make  of 
some  very  miscellaneous  papers  that  have  fortunately 
come  to  my  hand,  from  various  sources,  filled  with 
details  of  more  or  less  interest  as  contributions  to  a 
biography.  In  one  point  of  view  some  of  the  contents 
of  these  papers  are  trivial,  and  may  seem  in  their  re- 
hearsal to  be  below  the  dignity  that  should  invest  our 
subject.  But  in  another  aspect  they  will  engage  the 
reader  as  really  "instructive  in  themselves,  and,  in  fact, 
as  specially  essential  to  our  knowledge  of  Count  Rum- 
33 


514  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

ford  in  the  more  private  relations  of  his  life,  and  partic- 
ularly in  those  with  his  daughter.  The  papers  are  of 
the  highest  authenticity,  and  have  a  charming  natural- 
ness as  well  as  variety  in  their  details.  So  far  as  they 
divulge  matters  of  a  disagreeable  and  discreditable  char- 
acter, it  is  to  be  remembered  that  public  notoriety  and 
scandal  once  gave  a  far  more  extended  and  sharpened 
relation  of  them  than  they  will  find  in  these  pages. 

It  is  necessary  to  anticipate  in  the  order  of  narration 
to  introduce  the  materials  now  to  be  used. 

On  returning  to  his  house  at  Brompton,  after  the 
embarkation  of  his  daughter,  the  Count  expressed  his 
feelings  on  parting  with  her  in  a  letter  which  immedi- 
ately followed  her  over  the  seas. 

"BROMPTON  Row,  3ot.h  Aug.,  1799. 

"  DEAR  SALLY,  —  After  giving  myself  much  trouble,  I  ob- 
tained the  information  that  your  vessel  sailed  from  Gravesend 
the  day  after  I  left  you  there,  with  a  good  wind  ;  that  you  were 
well  and  in  fine  spirits,  — as  expressed  to  me,  like  a  bird  let  out 
of  a  cage.  While  I  was  very  dull  and  not  well,  I  could  not  but 
be  struck  with  the  contrast.  But  no  matter,  my  dear.  I 
should  be  sorry  to  have  you  unhappy  because  I  am.  I  dare  say 
you  will  be  glad  to  see  me  when  I  join  you  in  America  next 
year,  as  I  hope  to  do.  Or,  if  I  come  not  there,  you  will  return 
here.  So  I  shall  make  no  further  comments  on  the  subject  ; 
only  repeat  my  fervent  prayer  and  wishes  for  your  having  a 
prosperous  voyage  and  finding  friends  well." 

In  the  interval  between  the  Countess's  return  to  her 
native  country  in  1799  and  her  second  visit  to  her 
father  in  1811,  she  received  from  him,  as  she  enumerates 
them,  one  hundred  and  four  letters.  Remaining  in 
France  and  England  many  years  after  her  father's  death, 
she  led  an  unsettled  life  from  that  time.  In  the  year 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  515 

1828,  while  living  at  her  father's  house  in  Brompton, 
she   had  taken    under    her   care   an   English   child   two 
years  of  age,   named  Emma  Gammell,  who  ever  after- 
wards lived  with  her  in  the  closest  and  most  affection- 
ate  relations,   addressing   the  Countess  as  "aunt,"  be- 
ing at  home  with  her,  and  sharing  her  confidence  in  all 
things.     A  short  time  before  the  Countess's  death,  her 
"niece"  was  married  to  Mr.  John  Burgom,  of  Concord, 
New  Hampshire,  also  of  English  birth,  and  continued, 
with  her  husband,  to  live  in  the  Countess's  house.      In 
the  infirmities  of  advanced  age,   some  of  the  peculiar- 
ities and  eccentricities  with  which  nature  and  the  circum- 
stances  of  her  life   had  marked  Miss  Sarah  were  much 
intensified.     She  had  divided  the  hundred  and  four  let- 
ters from    her  father,  which  she  often  pored  over,  into 
two  parcels.     One  of  these,   about  twenty  in   number, 
concerned  the  Count's  efforts  and  experiences  in  con- 
nection with  the  Royal  Institution.     The  other  parcel, 
which  she  was  wont  to  speak  of  as'  "  the  scolding  let- 
ters," contained  either  advice  and  reprimand  for  herself, 
or    references    to    his    own    domestic    unhappiness   and 
grievous  disappointment  in  his  second   marriage.     Of 
this  parcel  the  Countess  had  made  abstracts,  sometimes 
selecting  sentences  and  mixing  her  own  comments  with 
them,  sometimes  copying  the  whole  of  the  letter  in  her 
father's  words.     She  was,  however,  very  careless  about 
dates,  being  as  likely  to  attach  wrong  as  right  ones,  and 
thus  causing  some  perplexity  for  a  reader  who  uses  these 
materials  in  connection  with  other  correctly  dated  papers. 
Indeed,  the  Countess  was  so  habitually  negligent  in  this 
matter  of  dates,  that  Sir  Charles   Blagden,  who,  as  we 
shall  soon  have  occasion  to  note,  was  one  of  her  warm- 
est friends  and    most    faithful    correspondents,    among 


516  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

other  rebukes  which  he  had  the  fidelity  and  courage 
to  administer,  asks  her  pointedly  if  she  had  "  no  al- 
manac." 

Shortly  before  her  death,  while  confined  to  her  bed 
and  chair,  and  at  times  not  wholly  herself,  she  re- 
quired her  "  niece  "  to  bring  to  her  the  two  parcels  of 
the  Count's  letters  and  commit  them  to  the  fire.  Mrs. 
Burgom  informs  me,  that,  under  the  persuasion  that  the 
letters  which  related  to  the  Royal  Institution  might  at 
some  time  have  an  historical  value,  she  tried  by  a  little 
artifice  of  concealment  to  avert  the  fate  designed  for 
that  package.  But  the  Countess,  being  at  the  moment 
especially  persistent  and  watchful,  discovered  the  intent 
and  peremptorily  required  their  destruction.  In  view 
of  what  has  been  so  imperfectly  explained  in  a  previous 
chapter  relating  to  the  Count's  breach  with  his  friends 
and  a  quarrel  about  the  management  of  the  Institution, 
there  is  occasion  to  regret  the  destruction  of  that  set  of 
the  Count's  letters,  for  they  may  have  contained  what 
we  have  no  trace  or  hint  of  in  any  other  paper  from  his 
pen,  —  his  own  account  of  the  nature  and  occasion  of 
the  variance.  The  Countess's  abstract  of  the  larger 
package,  classed  as  "  the  scolding  letters,"  is  in  my 
hands,  and  its  use,  in  the  proper  place,  will  afford  in- 
struction, though  not  pleasure. 

I  have  also  before  me  a  bundle  of  some  forty  or 
more  letters  to  the  Countess,  from  her  friend  Sir  Charles 
Blagden.  He  was  her  friend^  faithful,  discreet,  and  so 
sure  of  his  right  and  duty  in  the  case  as  to  allow  him- 
self great  frankness,  and  even  a  degree  of  severity,  in 
some  of  his  communications  to  her.  These  letters 
begin  on  her  return  to  America,  in  1799,  and  continue 
at  intervals  till  her  second  visit  to  Europe  to  join  her 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  517 

father,  when  a  new  series  of  them  commences  and  con- 
tinues up  to  the  death  of  the  writer. 

Those  of  Sir  Charles's  letters  which  were  addressed 
to  the  Countess  while  she  was  in  America,  between  the 
dates  of  her  first  two  visits  abroad,  are  especially  valu- 
able from  the  notices  which  they  contain  of  her  father's 
course  and  doings  in  that  interval.  Though  Sir  Charles 
was  mistaken  in  his  surmises  as  to  the  probable  failure 
of  the  Count's  matrimonial  scheme,  it  would,  perhaps, 
have  been  better  for  the  parties  if  he  had  been  a  true 
prophet.  He  appears  to  have  been  a  fair-minded  man, 
and  his  reference  to  his  own  breach  of  confidential  re- 
lations with  the  Count,  while  not  definite  enough  to 
acquaint  us  with  the  subject-matter  of  the  unkindness, 
must  lead  us  to  recognize  in  it  a  token  of  those  qual- 
ities in  the  character  or  temperament  of  Count  Rum- 
ford  which  alienated  from  him  several  who  were  once 
his  friends. 

For  another,  and  though  comparatively  a  trivial,  yet 
by  no  means  an  uninteresting,  matter  of  human  concern, 
presenting  itself  in  a  very  inartificial  way  in  these  let- 
ters, they  are  of  service  to  biographer  and  readers.  Sir 
Charles,  as  the  Countess  herself  informs  us,  and  as 
possibly  may  be  fairly  inferred  from  his  own  expres- 
sions, was  once  willing,  perhaps  desirous,  to  marry  her. 
Her  account  of  his  application  to  her  father  for  that 
purpose,  and  of  the  Count's  way  of  dealing  with  the 
case,  has  been  given  on  a  previous  page.  Sir  Charles 
seems  not  only  to  have  acquiesced  in  the  necessity  of 
laying  aside  the  character  of  a  lover,  but  also  to  have 
willingly  assumed  the  office  of  a  guardian  toward  the 
Countess.  She  was  in  her  twenty-sixth  year  when  the 
correspondence  from  which  extracts  are  to  be  given 


518  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

began.  From  the  tenor  of  his  letters  we  are  to  infer 
some  of  the  contents  of  hers  to  him.  From  this  it 
would  appear,  that,  after  he  had  yielded  any  expectations 
or  wishes  of  his  own  to  make  her  his  wife,  she  required 
of  him  the  somewhat  exacting  and  embarrassing  respon- 
sibility of  advising  her  as  between  various  suitors  and 
available  gentlemen,  whose  qualities  and  pretensions 
she  made  known  to  her  former  admirer. 

Sir  Charles  being  a  near  neighbor  of  the  Count,  as 
he  had  lodgings  at  No.  51  Brompton  Row,  writes  to 
the  Countess  under  date  of  June  9,  1800,  to  congratu- 
late her  on  her  safe  arrival  in  America.  He  begins  in 
this  letter  to  assume  the  character  of  an  adviser  and 
counsellor,  —  sometimes  a  very  frank  and  even  severely 
rebuking  one,  — which,  as  we  shall  see,  led  him  gradu- 
ally to  take  upon  himself,  apparently  with  the  full  toler- 
ance of  the  Countess,  the  authority  of  a  father,  strangely 
qualifying  the  tone  of  a  lover.  It  seems  that  Sir  Charles 
had  investments  in  the  American  funds,  and  wished  to 
purchase  more.  He  proposes  to  the  Countess  that  she 
shall  collect  his  dividends  for  him,  and  intimates  his 
intention  to  go  to  the  United  States,  at  least  as  a  vis- 
itor, as  he  had  once  already  been.  The  following  is  an 
extract. 

"  From  a  conviction  that  your  natural  discernment  and  the 
openness  with  which  I  always  spoke  and  acted  before  you  and 
the  Count  had  made  you  exactly  acquainted  with  my  character 
and  turn  of  mind,  I  was  induced  to  request  that  you  would 
frankly  tell  me,  after  you  had  resided  a  little  time  in  America, 
whether  my  removal  from  this  country  to  that  would,  in  your 
opinion,  contribute  to  my  happiness.  Would  you  advise  me,  as 
a  friend,  to  settle  in  America  ?  or  to  make  a  tour  in  that  coun- 
try ?  or  not  to  go  thither  at  all  ?  You  have  often  heard  me 
mention  Rhode  Island  as  by  far  the  healthiest  and  pleasantest 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  519 

spot  I  had  any   opportunity  of  seeing  on  the  west  side  of  the 
Atlantic." 

Then  follow  specific  inquiries  as  to  expenses,  privi- 
leges, neighbors,  etc. 

"  It  will  give  me  very  great  pleasure  to  see  you  again,  either 
here  or  in  America.  Do  not  depend  upon  the  Count's  going  to 
visit  you  there.  It  is  indeed  possible  that  the  fancy  may  sud- 
denly strike  him,  and  then  he  will  set  off  in  an  instant,  almost 
without  giving  notice.  But  his  favorite  child,  the  Institution, 
cannot  yet  walk  alone,  and,  if  he  quits  it  at  the  time  he  talks  of, 
will  be  a  helpless  cripple,  even  if  it  should  continue  to  exist  at 
all.  I  still  see,  with  regret,  his  time  and  powers  wasted  on  an 
object  so  inferior,  in  my  opinion,  to  those  which  presented  them- 
selves to  him  in  America.  But  he  views  the  thing  in  a  differ- 
ent light,  and  I  suspect  will  be  led  on  to  stay  here  one  year  after 
another,  till  you  are  worn  out  with  expecting  him,  and  the  oppor- 
tunity of  distinguishing  himself  in  a  rising  country  will  be  past." 

Sir  Charles  subscribes  himself,  "  With  true  esteem 
and  affectionate  regard,  Dear  Madam,  your  faithful 
friend  and  servant." 

Under  date  of  September  10,  1801,  he  responds  to  a 
letter  from  the  Countess  of  the  ijth  of  July,  and  writes 
that  the  Count  had  read  to  him  "  the  very  handsome 
letter  which  he  had  received  from  General  Knox,"  con- 
cerning the  agreeable  arrangement  she  had  made  for 
passing  the  summer  at  the  General's  residence  in  Thom- 
aston,  Maine,  and  he  adds  :  — 

"  It  is  with  great  pleasure  that  I  learn,  both  from  the  Count 
and  yourself,  the  great  proficiency  you  make  in  drawing.  He 
says  that  you  have  naturally  a  talent  for  that  art,  and  could  with 
pains  arrive  to  great  perfection  in  it ;  that  he  had  advised  you 
whilst  you  were  in  Europe  to  cultivate  this  talent,  but  that  you 
did  not  then  take  to  it  as  kindly  as  he  wished.  I  believe  it 
would  sensibly  add  to  his  pleasure  on  seeing  you  again  if  he 


520  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

found  that  you  had  made  the  progress  in  it  of  which  he  thinks 
you  capable.  Your  father  is  indeed  going  to  Munich,  and  talks 
of  setting  out  in  a  fortnight.  I  had  at  one  time  almost  settled 
to  go  with  him,  but  he  then  proposed  to  stay  there  all  this 
winter  and  next  summer.  Two  or  three  weeks  ago,  however, 
he  changed  his  plan,  and  determined  to  make  this  only  a  pre- 
paratory visit,  and  to  return  hither  within  three  months.  This 
was  more  hurry  of  travelling  than  I  could  venture  to  undertake, 
especially  as  the  journey  back  would  be  in  the  bad  months  of 
November  and  December.  So  that  I  now  propose  to  spend  the 
winter  in  England.  For  my  own  part  I  sincerely  wish  that  he 
had  found  it  expedient  to  make  a  voyage  to  America  instead  of 
this  journey  on  the  Continent.  I  would  then  certainly  have 
accompanied  him  across  the  Atlantic,  notwithstanding  the  un- 
settled state  of  affairs  here.  He  every  day  talks  more  and  more 
coolly  about  going  to  America,  and  though  I  really  think  that 
he  means  to  make  you  a  visit  there  some  time  or  other,  yet  it 
does  not  seem  as  if  he  promised  himself  much  satisfaction  be- 
sides. I  am  persuaded  that  I  should  like  it  much  more  than  he 
would,  but  whether  I  shall  ever  have  the  resolution  to  set  out 
unless  some  particular  inducement  of  company  or  objects  pre- 
sents itself,  remains  uncertain  even  to  myself.  There  is  a  hint 
in  your  letter  about  '  seeing  your  European  friends  again,  before 
a  great  length  of  time/  To  me,  and  I  believe  to  all  your 
friends,  the  visit  would  afford  very  sincere  pleasure.  But  before 
you  undertake  it,  I  would  advise  you  to  be  sure  that  the  Count 
approves  of  it.  I  have  no  reason  to  think  that  his  regard  for  you 
is  lessened,  but  he  seems  to  me  rather  more  difficult  to  deal 
with  than  formerly,  and  particularly  more  impatient  if  every- 
thing be  not  said  and  done  exactly  according  to  his  liking.  I 
mentioned  that  you  thought  he  did  not  write  to  you  so  fre- 
quently as  he  used  to  do,  and  he  immediately  took  fire  ;  but  at 
the  same  time  showed  me  a  list  of  thirteen  or  fourteen  letters 
which  he  had  sent  you  in  the  course  of  this  year,  1801.  No 
one  could  deny  that  it  was  a  sufficient  correspondence.  As  to 
his  health,  it  is  nearly  the  same  as  usual,  except  that  he  is 
rather  thinner,  having  lived  long  upon  a  very  spare  diet.  The 


Life  of  Coimt  Rumford  521 

constant  agitation  of  his  mind  and  the  irritable  constitution  with 
which  it  is  connected  will  necessarily  prevent  him  from  enjoy- 
ing a  regular  state  of  good  health  ;  but  his  life  seems  to  be  in  no 
danger.  At  his  desire  I  always  considered  myself  as  your  guar- 
dian, in  case  you  should  want  one.  And  since  I  knew  you,  my 
own  inclination  prompts  me  to  do  everything  which  I  had  be- 
fore undertaken  out  of  friendship  for  him.  The  Count  assures 
me  that  he  will  write  to  you  before  he  sets  out  for  Germany. 
I  thank  you  for  your  kind  remembrance,  whether  kept  within 
your  own  breast,  or  expressed  on  the  bark  of  trees,  or  in  the 
naming  of  places.  Be  assured  of  the  constant  regard  and  friend- 
ship with  which  I  am  affectionately  yours." 

Under  date  of  August  8,  1803,  the  Knight  writes  to 
the  Countess  from  London  :  — 

"  When  my  letter  of  last  June  was  written,  I  thought  your 
father  pretty  much  fixed  at  Munich,  and  therefore  ventured  to 
suggest  to  you  that  it  might  contribute  to  your  happiness  if  you 
were  to  be  established  at  that  court.  But  I  learn  since  that  the 
Elector  has  set  him  more  at  his  liberty,  and  that  in  consequence 
he  intends  to  return  to  England  this  autumn.  Political  diffi- 
culties may  possibly  stand  in  the  way  of  this  journey,  but  he 
hopes  to  avoid  them.  I  am  still  as  much  at  a  loss  as  I  was  in 
June,  to  answer  your  question  whether  your  father  be  going  to 
marry.  He  is  now,  as  I  told  you  in  that  letter,  making  the  tour 
of  Switzerland  with  a  very  amiable  French  lady.  But  I  have 
no  reason  to  think  that  they  have  any  idea  of  a  matrimonial 
connection.  When  the  Count  comes  to  England,  she  is  to 
return  to  Paris  ;  at  least,  so  he  writes  me  word. 

"  Your  present  situation,  I  believe,  is  approved  by  your 
father,  for  in  one  of  his  letters  last  winter  he  mentioned  that 
he  was  better  satisfied  with  your  conduct  than  ever.  I  wish  it 
made  you  happier,  but  am  not  surprised  at  the  kind  of  listless- 
ness  which  your  letter  so  strongly  expresses  without  removing 
it.  Such  good  affections  as  yours  ought  to  be  placed.  On  this 
subject,  however,  I  will  not  repeat  what  I  expressed  so  fully  in 
my  letter  of  last  June. 


522  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  We  are  here  in  a  great  bustle,  preparing  to  repel  the  inva- 
sion with  which  we  are  threatened.  It  is  an  unpleasant  time, 
and  I  sincerely  lament  the  renewal  of  war.  It  was  my  inten- 
tion to  have  gone  into  Germany  this  summer,  if  the  enemy  had 
not  so  much  obstructed  the  passages. 

"  My  health  continues  good,  but  I  am  not  in  very  high  spirits 
any  more  than  yourself.  We  have  both  nearly  the  same  cause 
for  our  complaint,  namely,  the  want  of  objects  sufficiently 
interesting." 

Under  date  of  London,  December  5,  1803,  Sir 
Charles  writes  :  — 

"  All  I  can  tell  you  about  your  father  is  this  :  he  continued 
travelling  with  the  French  lady  till  about  the  middle  of  Septem- 
ber, when  she  left  him  at  Mannheim,  and  returned  to  Paris. 
Your  father  had  applied  to  the  French  government  for  leave  to 
come  to  England  through  France,  but  was  refused.  In  con- 
sequence he  remained  at  Mannheim  till  the  middle  of  October, 
when,  having  by  some  means,  I  do  not  know  how,  induced  the 
French  government  to  change  their  resolution,  and  allow  him 
to  travel  in  France,  he  set  out  for  Paris  ;  and  I  know  that  he 
was  in  that  city  on  the  1st  of  November.  In  the  last  letter  I 
received  from  him,  which  was  written  the  day  before  he  set  out 
from  Mannheim,  he  said  that  he  had  great  hopes  of  being 
in  England  before  the  end  of  this  year.  Since  that  time  I  have 
heard  nothing  from  him.  He  continues  very  intimate  with  the 
lady,  but  whether  it  will  end  in  a  marriage,  I  cannot  say.  My 
own  opinion  is  rather  inclined  to  the  negative,  yet  I  have  no 
good  foundation  for  it.  However,  should  they  marry,  I  do  not 
think  it  would  be  an  unfortunate  event  for  you.  The  lady  is 
rich,  and  most  probably  will  have  no  children.  If  you  should 
have  no  other  home  you  would  naturally  live  with  them,  and  in 
that  situation  would  enjoy  every  kind  of  comfort  belonging  to  a 
single  state.  Whether  that  would  make  you  amends  for  the 
want  of  conjugal  felicity,  you  can  best  judge  from  your  own 
feelings.  And  this  leads  me  to  the  part  of  your  letter  which 
refers  to  your  idea  of  settling  at  Northampton  [Massachusetts]. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  523 

My  advice  on  that  subject  is,  that  you  should  by  no  means 
enter  into  such  an  engagement  without  your  father's  express 
approbation.  Acquaint  him  with  all  the  circumstances,  and 
with  your  own  feelings,  as  exactly  as  you  can  ;  and  then  say 
that  you  will  accept  or  refuse  the  offer,  according  to  the  advice 
that  he  shall  give.  It  is  probable  that  he  will  not  be  able  to 
make  up  his  mind  till  his  own  affair  with  the  French  lady  shall 
be  decided  ;  and  your  suitor,  if  he  is  reasonable,  will  have 
patience  till  that  time,  on  your  fairly  stating  to  him  the  causes 
of  your  own  indecision.  Before  you  make  an  engagement  with 
this  gentleman  be  sure  of  yourself  in  one  respect,  namely,  that 
you  shall  not  regret  the  giving  up  the  splendid  society  in  which 
your  father  will  live  in  Paris,  if  he  marries  the  lady  in  question, 
for  that  sort  of  existence  which  you  will  have  at  Northampton. 

"  A  letter  which  I  sent  you  the  latter  end  of  last  July  (by 
the  favor  of  Mr.  Gore,  who  promised  to  forward  it  by  the  first 
ship  for  Boston)  will  have  informed  you  that  your  father 
seemed  not  likely  to  have  any  permanent  settlement  at  the 
court  of  Bavaria,  in  which  case  your  establishment  there  would 
not  be  so  pleasant  as  I  hoped  when  I  wrote  to  you  in  June. 
Where  he  will  ultimately  fix  it  is  impossible  to  foresee.  I  do 
not  think  it  will  be  in  this  country,  nor  probably  in  France, 
unless  he  should  marry  the  lady  with  whom  he  travelled.  As 
to  America,  he  seems  less  inclined  to  go  thither  than  ever. 

"  I  thank  you  very  much  for  remembering  my  dear  sister. 
She  died  two  years  ago. 

u  My  own  situation  is  too  uncertain  to  indulge  any  specula- 
tion about  going  to  America.  But  I  am  truly  obliged  by  your 
friendly  offer  of  taking  up  my  final  abode  with  you  at  North- 
ampton, in  case  you  should  settle  there. 

"  Since  this  was  written  I  have  received  a  letter  from  your 
father,  dated  at  Paris,  November  n.  By  this  it  is  evident  that 
he  expects  to  marry  the  French  lady,  though  nothing  is  yet 
finally  determined.  I  again  particularly  advise  you  not  to  enter 
into  any  engagement  till  you  know  the  result  of  this  affair,  and 
the  plan  that  your  father  shall  adopt  respecting  you,  in  case  it 
should  end  according  to  his  wishes,  of  which,  however,  I  have 


524  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

still  some  little  doubt,  because  he  is,  as  you  know,  of  a  very 
sanguine  temper.  He  does  not  seem  likely  to  come  to  England 
very  soon." 

Under  date  of  March  12,  1804,  Sir  Charles  writes  to 
the  Countess  from  Liverpool  :  — 

u  The  last  account  I  received  of  your  father  was  dated  the 
iQth  of  January.  He  was  then  at  Paris,  very  assiduous  in  his 
attentions  to  the  French  lady,  with  whom,  indeed,  he  spent 
most  of  his  time.  But  I  believe  she  had  not  then  determined 
to  marry  him,  and  I  am  still  inclined  to  think  she  never  will. 
In  the  mean  time  he  is  entirely  losing  his  interest  in  this  country. 
His  residence  at  Paris  this  winter,  whilst  we  were  threatened 
with  an  invasion,  is  considered  by  every  one  as  very  improper 
conduct,  and  his  numerous  enemies  do  not  fail  to  make  the 
most  of  it.  He  has  quarrelled  with  Mr.  Bernard  and  others 
of  his  old  friends  at  the  Royal  Institution,  and  they  do  all  they 
can  to  render  him  unpopular.  Probably  he  has  written  to  you 
more  than  once  by  American  ships  since  his  residence  at  Paris. 
To  me  he  wrote  on  the  I2th  of  November,  about  a  fortnight 
after  his  arrival  there.  But  I  expect  no  other  letter  from  him, 
as  it  would  certainly  be  imprudent  in  him  to  keep  up  a  corre- 
spondence with  this  country  during  his  residence  in  France.  I 
believe  there  are  still  letters  from  America  lying  for  him  at 
Herries  the  banker's,  for,  as  the  Count  had  not  given  him 
directions  to  forward  them  to  Paris,  he  did  not  think  himself 
authorized  to  do  so.  Perhaps  some  of  your  letters  are  among 
them. 

"  It  is  a  long  time  since  I  have  seen  Lady  Palmerston,  but  I 
know  that  she  is  in  tolerably  good  health.  Her  eldest  son,  the 
present  Lord  Palmerston,  is  grown  a  fine  young  man. 

"  I  am  anxious  to  know  what  you  have  determined  relative 
to  a  certain  affair  at  Northampton." 

Under  date  of  London,  July  27,  1804,  Sir  Charles 
writes :  — 

"  The  last  letter  I  received  from  your  father  was  dated  the 


Life  of  Count  Rimiford.  525 

4th  of  this  month.  It  appears  that  he  was  not  married  then, 
but  that  he  expected  to  be  soon.  He  writes  on  this  subject 
with  such  confidence  to  all  his  friends,  that  I  can  scarcely  ven- 
ture to  call  in  question  any  longer  the  favorable  issue  of  his 
suit.  Yet,  from  my  knowledge  of  the  lady  in  question,  her 
sentiments  and  ideas,  I  shall  not  cease  to  entertain  some  doubts 
till  the  event  actually  takes  place.  With  respect  to  you  he 
writes  to  me  thus  :  '  I  have  no  very  late  news  of  my  Daughter, 
but  report  says  that  she  is  about  to  take  a  husband.  Her  for- 
tune, or,  rather,  inheritance,  is  settled.  She  will  have  6,000 
livres  a  year  in  the  French  funds,  with  the  capital,  in  addition  to 
her  pension  of  2,000  Florins  a  year  from  Bavaria.'  Probably  he 
will  acquaint  you  with  this  himself;  if  not,  I  beg  you  neither  to 
let  him  nor  any  person  know  that  I  have  communicated  it  to 
you.  I  am  very  much  dissatisfied  with  his  conduct  toward  me 
in  certain  points,  since  he  has  been  in  France,  and  for  that 
reason  have  not  written  to  him  since  last  December.  It  is  at 
present  my  intention  to  drop  his  correspondence  entirely,  and 
perhaps  this  is  the  last  letter  that  you  will  receive  from  me  for 
a  considerable  time." 

Reference  is  made  in  the  letter  to  the  death  of  Lord 
Palmerston,  and  the  illness  of  Lady  Palmerston,  of 
whom  Blagden  writes  :  — 

"A  letter  from  you,  I  am  sure,  would  give  her  pleasure. 
She  retains  the  same  regard  for  your  father  as  formerly.  Hav- 
ing thus  answered  your  questions,  allow  me  to  add  that  your 
account  of  yourself  gives  me  pain.  That  you  are  a  tolerable 
adept  at  the  different  games  of  which  you  are  extravagantly 
fond  ;  that  you  could  play  at  billiards  and  whist  forever,  are 
confessions  which  I  hope  you  do  not  make  to  your  father,  and 
particularly  not  to  your  lover.  If  the  latter  be  really  a  man  of 
sense,  and  were  to  judge  that  such  is  unalterably  your  character, 
he  would  avoid  you  as  the  most  dangerous  person  with  whom 
he  could  form  a  connection.  But  no  doubt  he  believes,  as  I 
do,  that  your  dissipation  is  not  natural,  and  that  if  your  affec- 
tions were  once  properly  fixed,  if  you  were  fulfilling  the  duties 


526  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

of  your  sex  as  the  mother  of  a  family,  you  would  feel  much 
more  real  pleasure  in  the  occupations  which  would  result  from 
that  situation  than  play,  or  company,  or  any  kind  of  dissipa- 
tion ever  afforded  you.  The  latter  always  end  with  the  feeling 
of  which  you  so  justly  complain,  that  'nothing  delights.'  With 
respect  to  the  Northampton  gentleman,  you  seem  to  me  to 
like  him  quite  well  enough  to  marry  him.  If,  therefore,  your 
father  makes  no  objection,  I  should  think  you  would  do  right  to 
give  him  a  favorable  answer  at  once.  I  have  now  some  doubts 
whether  your  father,  even  if  he  should  succeed  in  marrying  the 
French  lady,  would  wish  to  have  you  reside  with  him.  But  do 
not  marry  till  he  gives  his  consent,  or  at  least  till  he  tells  you 
that  he  has  no  objection.  How  happens  it  that  he  had  not  to 
the  4th  of  July  received  a  letter  from  you  on  this  subject  ?  I 
should  not  wonder  if  his  late  kindness  to  you  was  chiefly  at  the 
instigation  of  the  French  lady,  nor  indeed  if  she  contributed  to 
it  herself.*  She  is,  in  many  respects,  a  very  extraordinary 
woman.  Adieu,  my  dear  Countess.  Be  assured  of  my  sincere 
wishes  for  your  happiness,  whether  I  write  to  you  or  not." 

"LONDON,  August  12,  1805. 

"  MY  DEAR  COUNTESS,  —  It  is  now  more  than  a  year  ago 
that  I  wrote  to  you  in  answer  to  your  letter  of  the  preceding 
spring,  which  is  the  last  that  I  have  received  from  you.  Be 
assured  that  I  always  entertain  the  same  sentiments  of  regard 
for  you  ;  that  I  am  anxious  to  know  whether  your  health  con- 
tinues good,  and  particularly  whether  you  are  happy.  Has  the 
marriage  you  had  then  in  contemplation  taken  place  ?  It  would 

*  Sir  Charles  was  right  in  his  surmise  that  the  "  French  lady  "  had  contributed  to 
certain  valuable  gifts  sent  at  this  time  by  the  Count  to  his  daughter,  in  anticipation 
of  his  marriage.  The  Countess  makes  mention  in  her  journals  of  having  received 
at  this  time  some  rich  presents  of  lace,  jewels,  and  trinkets  from  Madame  Lavoisier. 
These,  which  she  highly  valued,  we  shall  find  she  was  in  danger  of  losing  when  the 
vessel  in  which  she  was  going  to  join  her  father  was  captured.  She  recovered  them, 
and  had  the  opportunity  of  wearing  them  on  fit  occasions,  and  of  bestowing  them  on 
particular  friends  and  relatives  before  her  death.  I  have  seen  many  of  them,  and  they 
are  exceedingly  beautiful,  exhibiting  fine  taste  in  their  selection,  intrinsic  value,  and 
the  thoroughness  and  costliness  of  the  workmanship  of  former  days. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  527 

give  me  great   pleasure   to  learn  that  you  are  settled  to  your 
satisfaction. 

"  In  my  last  letter  I  hinted  to  you  that  I  thought  your  father 
had  not  acted  toward  me  in  Paris  exactly  as  a  friend  ought  to 
have  done.  He  assures  me  that  I  am  mistaken  ;  but  several 
circumstances,  and  particularly  his  withholding  from  me  infor- 
mation of  great  consequence  to  me,  and  which  he  had  the  best 
opportunity  of  sending,  have  raised  in  my  mind  such  a  distrust 
of  his  friendship  that  we  can  never  be  on  the  same  terms  of 
confidence  as  before.  He  is  now  at  Munich,  but  still  profess- 
ing that  he  expects  an  union  with  the  lady  whom  he  has  so  long 
attended.  You  know  that  I  have  always  doubted  of  his  success 
in  this  point,  and  my  doubts  are  not  lessened.  Our  good  friend 
Lady  Palmerston  died  last  January.  To  the  last  she  retained 
her  affectionate  character,  and  more  than  once  she  inquired  for 
you. 

"  If  you  see  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gore,  remember  me  kindly  to 
them.  I  hear  that  they  are  building  a  fine  house  ten  or  twelve 
miles  from  Boston. 

"  On  whatever  terms  I  may  be  with  your  father,  depend  upon 
the  sincerity  of  my  friendship  for  you,  and  my  fervent  wishes 
for  your  happiness. 

"  I  remain,  my  dear  Countess,  your  faithful  servant, 

"C.  BLAGDEN." 

Dating  from  the  "  Royal  Society,  Somerset1  Place, 
London,  October  25,  1805,  Sir  Charles  writes:  — 

tc  MY  DEAR  COUNTESS,  —  I  send  you  this  short  letter  to 
fulfil  a  promise  I  formerly  made  you,  namely,  that  whenever  I 
should  learn  anything  decisive  on  the  subject  of  your  father's 
expected  marriage,  I  would  immediately  let  you  know  it.  A 
letter  is  just  come  to  my  hands  from  a  well-informed  person, 
which  contains  the  following  passage  :  — 

"' Je  puis  vous  annoncer  actuellement  d'une  maniere  positive, 
que  le  mariage  entre  M.  de  Rumford  et  Madame  Lavoisier  est 
d^finitivement  arreteV 


528  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  This  letter  is  dated  at  Paris,  the  2ist  of  October,  and  from 
a  direction  in  it  I  conclude  that  the  marriage  has  taken  place 
before  this  time. 

"  On  the  1 2th  of  last  August  I  put  a  letter  for  you  into  the 
hands  of  the  American  Minister  here.  In  it  I  inquired  if  your 
treaty  of  marriage  had  been  concluded.  But  since  that  time  a 
gentleman  from  Boston  has 'told  me  that  it  was  broken  off  some 
time  ago.  Perhaps  this  may  prove  a  fortunate  circumstance 
now,  as  your  father  has  effected  bis  marriage.  I  have  not, 
however,  the  remotest  idea  how  he  intends  to  act  respecting 
you,  and  particularly  whether  he  thinks  of  bringing  you  to  Paris 
or  not.  Most  likely  he  has  himself  written  to  you  all  the 
details.  With  sincere  wishes  for  your  happiness,  I  remain,  my 
dear  Countess, 

"  Your  faithful  friend, 

"C.  BLAGDEN." 

At  this  point  we  may  defer  further  extracts  from  the 
letters  of  this  faithful  correspondent,  and  avail  ourselves 
of  the  abstract  made  by  the  Countess,  with  her  own 
comments  from  the  papers  which  have  been  above 
described. 

The  Countess  precedes  her  extracts,  copied  from  her 
father's  letters,  with  a  few  reminiscences  and  frank 
remarks,  giving  her  own  opinion  of  him  and  the  opin- 
ions of  others.  She  herself  shared  the  general  admira- 
tion of  his  personal  beauty,  fine  figure,  and  elegant 
manners.  She  thinks  he  derived  his  talents  from  his 
mother,  who  was  herself  noted  for  her  ingenuity,  her 
soft,  pleasing  ways,  and  for  moderately  good  looks. 
She  admits  that  he  was  naturally  aristocratic,  and  says 
that  he  was  cc  a  great  lover  of  perfection  of  every  shade 
and  quality."  The  Rev.  Dr.  Lathrop,  a  distinguished 
minister  in  Boston,  who  knew  the  Count  in  his  youth, 
is  quoted  by  her  as  having  said  that  "  he  was  born  a 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  529 

nobleman/'  She  says  he  was  a  great  favorite  with  the 
ladies,  though  some  of  them  sharply  censured  him  for 
the  four  following  faults  :  "  First,  for  living  so  short  a 
time  with  his  wives,  considering  him  from  it  a  bad  hus- 
band ;  second,  for  taking  sides  against  his  country ; 
third,  letting  his  daughter  get  on  as  she  could,  he  revel- 
ling at  the  time  in  the  city  of  Paris  ;  fourth,  that  he 
should  pitch  on  Paris  as  a  permanent  residence,  when 
both  in  Munich  and  in  London  he  had  made  himself 
so  useful,  had  won  such  honors,  and  had  such  distin- 
guished associates  and  friends."  One  of  these  female 
critics,  the  Countess  adds,  repeated  against  him,  "for 
leaving  his  ladies  in  so  easy  a  manner,"  the  lines  of 
Cowper,  — 

"  Shows  love  to  be  a  mere  profession  ; 
Proves  that  the  heart  is  none  of  his, 
Or  soon  expels  him  if  it  is." 

Another  of  the  sex,  on  being  told  of  his  dereliction 
towards  his  native  country,  repeated  with  a  sigh, — 

"  O  ye  winds  !  breathe  not  my  faults !  " 

Sarah  writes  as  if  several  of  these  "female  critics"  had 
once  freely  discussed  her  father's  faults  and  merits  in 
her  own  hearing,  and  she  appears  to  have  made  an  im- 
partial report  of  them.  One  of  these  women  intimated 
that  the  Count  in  his  early  manhood  had  been  enticed 
from  the  service  of  his  native  country  by  the  contrast 
between  the  appearance  of  the  British  officers,  with  their 
fine  accoutrements  and  splendid  discipline,  and  the  raw 
and  uncouth  American  volunteers,  —  "possibly  with  tat- 
tered garments,  giving  a  shot,  and  then  running  behind 
a  tree."  "Yes,"  interrupted  another  woman,  "you 
know  the  Count  is  fond  of  external  show.  But  you 
would  not  have  caught  your  glorious  Washington  tak- 
34 


530  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

ing  up  arms  against  his  native  country."  Some  kindly 
participant  in  the  discussion  called  attention  to  the 
Count's  noble  qualities,  and  to  his  devotion  of  himself 
so  laboriously  to  the  service  of  his  fellow-men. 

The  daughter  affirms  that  her  father  was  deeply  dis- 
appointed at  not  being  received  as  Minister  of  Bavaria 
in  England,  as  he  would  have  greatly  valued  and  en- 
joyed the  consideration  which  such  an  office  would  have 
added  to  all  his  other  distinctions.  His  chagrin  was 
very  evident,  though  he  exhibited  no  bitterness  for  his 
discomfiture.  She  thinks  that  he  was  induced  to  plan 
and  promote  the  Royal  Institution  as  a  substitute  for 
occupation,  and  for  claims  to  honor.  In  this  latter 
inference  she  may  have  been  mistaken,  for,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  Count  was  in  correspondence  with  reference 
to  such  an  Institution  with  Mr.  Bernard  before  his 
appointment  as  ambassador.  She  is  willing,  however, 
to  recognize  in  the  engrossing  occupation  which  kept 
him  in  England  a  providential  favor  to  him,  as  the 
change  £)f  administration  in  Bavaria,  though  not  depriv- 
ing him  of  honor  and  influence,  had  qualified  his  op- 
portunities for  devising  and  effecting  his  favorite  meas- 
ures. She  thinks  also  that,  as  Bavaria  had  become 
involved  in  Bonaparte's  wars,  the  fate  which  befell  her 
father's  two  aides-de-camp  might  have  involved  him,  had 
he  returned. 

The  Count's  German  valet,  Aichner,  having  been  in 
his  service  many  years  and  proved  himself  capable  and 
faithful,  had  become  very  essential  to  his  master,  and 
was  generally  his  attendant  on  all  his  travels.  The 
Count  had  allowed  him  to  marry,  and  the  wife  was  of 
use  to  him  as  a  housekeeper.  But  when  these  servants 
became  the  parents  of  six  children,  the  Count's  com- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  531 

placency  was  somewhat  tried.  For  five  of  these  children 
he  found  situations  in  Germany.  He  took  the  parents 
and  one  of  the  children,  a  pretty  little  girl,  with  him  to 
England,  in  1798,  but  found  it  necessary  soon  to  send 
them  back  to  Germany.  He  engaged,  in  Aichner's 
place,  a  capable  young  Englishman,  named  Roice,  who, 
being  a  carpenter,  proved  quite  useful  to  him  in  im- 
proving the  house  which  he  purchased  at  Brompton. 
The  German  servants  returned  to  Bavaria  before  the 
daughter  came  to  America.  She  thought  they  suffered 
from  homesickness,  and,  with  an  indirect  reference  to 
her  own  feelings,  she  asked  her  father  to  read  Cowper's 
verses,  — 

"  O  solitude  !  where  are  the  charms,"  etc. 

Sarah  adds  that  though  her  father  was  not  received  as 
the  Bavarian  ambassador,  he  was  honorably  and  heartily 
welcomed  by  all  classes  of  people.  The  Palmerstons 
were  his  most  intimate  friends,  and  he  was  on  terms  of 
the  freest  and  most  cordial  relations  with  them.  The 
Count  would  seldom  pass  his  Lordship's  house,  in 
Hanover  Square,  without  going  in,  and  in  the  season 
for  it  he  made  constant  visits  to  the  superb  estate  at 
Broadlands.  Lady  Palmerston,  as  woman  and  house- 
keeper, was  the  ideal  of  Miss  Sarah's  admiration.  She 
made  her  home  so  attractive  to  her  guests  that  they  did 
not  know  how  to  leave  it.  "  It  was  a  kind  of  an  en- 
chanted castle,  where  there  were  regular  reunions  of  the 

J  o 

first  society,  entertained  with  amusements  and  splendid 
hospitality."  Still,  the  daughter  says,  her  father's  posi- 
tion in  England  was  a  cc  let-down  "  from  what  it  had 
been  in  Bavaria,  and  he  felt  the  change  in  the  considera- 
tion practised  towards  him.  His  house,  at  Brompton, 
a  few  minutes'  walk  from  Piccadilly,  was  "  pretty,"  and 


532  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

on  account  of  its  peculiar  arrangements  it  was  visited 
as  an  object  of  curiosity  by  people  of  the  middle  and 
higher  classes.  But  it  was  not  the  palace  which  he 
had  occupied  at  Munich.  He  missed  the  warm  and 
devoted  personal  friends  whom  he  had  attracted  to  him 
in  that  city.  So  he  became  restless,  going  to  the  Conti- 
nent and  returning  after  short  visits,  till  he  settled  in 
France,  and  then  continuing  the  same  visits  to  Munich, 
when  he  painfully  realized  the  change  in  his  circle  there. 
Next  to  Lady  Palmerston,  his  best  female  friend  was 
the  Countess  Nogarola,  and  she  died  from  a  broken 
heart  at  the  loss  of  her  only  son. 

The  new  Elector  and  his  advisers  and  confidants 
were  either  deficient  in  sympathy  with  the  Count  or 
directly  hostile  to  him,  and  there  had  been  an  important 
change  in  the  political  relations  of  the  Electorate.  The 
policy  of  Charles  Theodore  in  endeavoring,  as  a  member 
of  the  Germanic  Empire,  to  preserve  a  neutrality  be- 
tween France  and  Austria  in  their  wars,  had  been 
changed  by  him  before  his  death,  and  he  had  become 
the  ally  of  Austria.  Rumford  is  supposed  to  have 
approved,  if  he  did  not  suggest,  this  change  of  policy, 
which  the  succeeding  Elector  had  reason  to  regard  as 
calamitous.  The  battle  at  Hohenlinden  in  December, 
1 800,  resulting  in  the  defeat  of  the  allies,  put  the  Elec- 
torate in  the  possession  of  France,  of  which  the  Elector 
consequently  became  a  vassal  till  the  whirlwind  of  the 
Revolution  again  delivered  him. 

The  following  note,  of  the  Countess  referred  to  her 
again  widowed  grandmother. 

"BOSTON,  September  25,  1800. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  heard  by  accident  something  as  if  grand- 
mamma was  at  Woburn.  If  she  is  there,  it  would  be  a  great 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  533 

satisfaction  to  me  to  know  it.     Would  you  be  so  obliging  as  to 
let  me  know,  by  a  line,  if  she  be  there  ? 

"  I  remain  your  much  obliged  friend, 

"S.  RUMFORD. 
"  HON.  LOAMMI  BALDWIN." 

The  following  letter  was  written  by  the  Countess 
while  she  was  on  a  visit  to  the  house  of  General 
Knox,  Washington's  Secretary  of  War,  at  Thomas- 
ton,  Maine. 

"THOMASTON,  St.  George's  River,  July  12,  1802. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  hope  you  will  write  to  my  father  this  sum- 
mer. Before  I  left  Boston  I  received  a  very  charming  letter 
from  him.  He  was  then  in  London,  but  expected  in  May  to 
set  out  again  for  Germany.  You  may  recollect  that  he  has 
already  been  once  to  Germany  since  I  saw  him.  Adieu,  my 
dear  sir  ;  remember  me  kindly  to  all  friends  at  Woburn,  and 
believe  me  to  be  your  very  much  obliged  and  sincere  friend, 

"S.  RUMFORD. 
"  COLONEL  LOAMMI  BALDWIN." 

It  may  interest  some  readers  to  have  the  daughter's 
account  and  views  of  her  father's  second  marriage  and 
its  unhappy  consequences,  as  she  presents  them  in  ex- 
tracts from  his  letters  to  her,  and  from  her  own  obser- 
vation after  she  had  joined  him  in  France.  She  says 
that  after  his  rejection  as  Minister,  "  his  first  bold,  im- 
prudent step,  completing  his  many  vexations,"  was  this 
marriage.  Though  the  lady  herself  was  truly  respect- 
able, and  worth  more  than  three  millions  of  francs,  the 
union  proved  so  little  to  the  Count's  honor  or  happi- 
ness, that  Baron  Cuvier  in  his  Eloge  made  no  mention 
of  it.  The  causes  of  their  disagreements,  she  says, 
were  many  and  various,  yet  the  marriage  was  entered 
into  under  such  favorable  auspices,  it  was  surprising 
that  it  should  have  resulted  so  unhappily.  Every  friend 


534  Life  of  Coimt  Rumford. 

of  the  parties  said  that  what  begun  in  friendship  be- 
tween them  grew  into  such  a  strong  affection  that  they 
were  really  in  love  with  each  other,  or  at  least  fancied 
themselves  so  for  some  time.  Though  the  Count  was 
by  no  means  destitute,  yet  the  lady  was  so  much  richer 
and  so  much  in  love  that  she  settled  upon  him  a  large 
sum  in  the  marriage  contract.  This  became  a  subject  of 
controversy  in  their  subsequent  separation,  but  the 
friends  who  arbitrated  in  the  matter  decided  in  his  favor, 
because  he  had  expended  considerable  sums  upon  the 
house  and  premises  which  were  provided  for  himself 
and  his  wife. 

The  daughter  urges  that  if  her  father  "  had  shown  him- 
self mercenary  or  avaricious  on  this  occasion,  it  would 
have  been  for  the  first  time.  For,  excepting  a  pension, 
he  left  Germany  a  poor  man,  much  to  his  credit,  con- 
sidering the  honor  and  kindness  that  had  been  heaped 
upon  him.  Such  was  his  poverty,  indeed,  that  he 
would  have  had  nothing  to  leave  to  her,  had  not  the 
Elector,  in  great  kindness,  settled  the  reversion  of  half 
the  pension  on  herself."  This,  she  adds,  was  paid  with 
the  utmost  punctuality.  The  money  which  had  been 
settled  upon  him  by  Madame  Lavoisier,  or  the  re- 
mainder of  it,  he  left,  by  will,  to  different  institutions. 
The  daughter,  however,  with  the  illustrative  example 
then  fresh  in  her  mind,  feels  bound  to  admit  that 
the  Count,  like  Bonaparte,  having  reached  conspicuous 
eminence,  had  a  downfall.  With  these  prefatory  re- 
marks, the  Countess  proceeds  to  give  extracts  from, 
or  the  substance  of,  "one  hundred  and  four  letters," 
which  she  received  from  her  father  between  1800  and 
1810.  Of  the  first  we  seem  to  have  the  whole,  as 
follows :  — • 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  535 

"LONDON,  Royal  Institution,  March  2,  1801. 

"  MY  DEAR  CHILD,  —  I  am  still  established  at  the  Institu- 
tion. I  have  been  exceedingly  busy,  but  desire  to  be  thankful 
that  all  is  now  nearly  completed,  when  I  shall  be  at  liberty. 
We  have  found  a  nice  able  man  for  his  place  as  lecturer,  Hum- 
phry Davy.  Lectures  are  given,  frequented  by  crowds  of  the 
first  people.  Lady  Palmerston  and  her  two  daughters,  Frances 
and  Elizabeth,  are  pretty  constant  attendants. 

u  They  would  not  receive  me  as  Minister  here,  but  seem 
disposed  now  to  make  it  up  to  me  by  the  respect  they  show  the 
Institution,  —  originally  and  chiefly  my  work.  Bernard  says 
they  are  crazy  about  it.  It  was  certainly  gratifying  to  me  to 
see  the  honorable  list  of  Lords,  Dukes,  &c.  as  fifty-guinea 
subscribers.  It  is  a  very  extensive  establishment,  and  will  cost 
a  great  deal  of  money  ;  but  I  hope  it  will  be  an  equal  advantage 
to  the  world,  as  the  expense  and  labor  of  forming  it  have  been 
great.  To  strive  for  good  things  I  view  as  a  laudable  ambition, 
as  I  hope  you  do,  my  dear  Sally.  But  I  hope,  above  all,  to 
hear  of  your  being  well  and  happy,  not  doubting  the  rest. 

"  I  hope  to  be  undisturbed  by  visitors  this  morning,  or  work- 
men, from  my  being  thought .  to  be  at  Harrowgate,  and  to  be 
allowed  quietly  to  fill  this  sheet.  You  can  form  no  idea  of  the 
bustle  in  which  I  live  since  I  have  taken  up  my  residence  in  this 
place.  In  short,  the  Royal  Institution  is  not  only  the  fashion, 
but  the  rage.  I  am  very  busy  indeed  in  striving  to  turn  the 
disposition  of  the  moment  to  a  good  account  for  the  permanent 
benefit  of  society. 

"  I  have  the  unspeakable  satisfaction  to  find  that  my  labors 
have  not  been  in  vain.  In  this  moment  of  scarcity  and  general 
alarm  the  measures  I  have  recommended  in  my  writings  for 
relieving  the  distresses  of  the  poor  are  very  generally  adopted, 
and  public  kitchens  have  been  erected  in  all  the  great  towns  in 
England  and  Scotland.  Upwards  of  sixty  thousand  persons  are 
fed  daily  from  the  different  public  kitchens  in  London. 

"  The  plan  has  lately  been  adopted  in  France,  and  a  very 
large  public  kitchen  for  feeding  the  poor  was  opened  in  Paris 
three  weeks  since.  A  gentleman  present  tells  me  that  the 


536  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

founders  of  the  Institution  did  me  the  honor  to  put  my  name 
at  the  head  of  the  Tickets  given  to  the  poor  authorizing  them  to 
receive  soup  at  the  public  kitchens.  At  Geneva  they  have  done 
still  more  to  show  me  respect.  They  have  marked  their  tickets 
with  a  stamp  on  which  my  portrait  and  my  name  are  engraved. 
"  I  am  not  vain,  my  dear  Sally,  but  it  is  utterly  impossible 
not  to  feel  deeply  affected  at  these  distinguished  marks  of 
honor  conferred  on  me  by  nations  at  war  with  Great  Britain, 
and  in  countries  where  I  have  never  been,  or  know  little  of  the 
inhabitants.  But  my  greatest  delight  arises  from  the  silent  con- 
templation of  having  succeeded  in  schemes  and  labors  for  the 
benefit  of  mankind." 

The  Count  adds  an  expression  of  his  hope  that  his 
daughter  shares  with  him  that  pleasure,  and  announces  an 
improvement  of  his  health  from  his  visit  to  Harrowgate. 

A  series  of  twenty-two  letters  is  passed  over  without 
extracts,  as  their  contents  relate  principally  to  the  do- 
mestic concerns  of  his  daughter  and  to  his  American 
friends.  The  Count  writes  often  about  the  progress  of 
his  house  at  Brompton,  and  the  Royal  Institution,  and 
he  refers  to  the  unpleasant  intelligence  he  had  received 
of  the  French  being  in  Munich.  His  excellent  friend, 
the  Countess  Nogarola,  "  whom  he  generally,  for  short- 
ness, calls  Mary,"  writes  him  word  that  the  people  of 
Munich  thought  and  spoke  of  him  often  under  the 
calamity  of  having  an  enemy  among  them.  The  experi- 
ence called  to  mind  the  occasion  when,  a  few  years  be- 
fore, the  Count  having  had  the  address  to  keep  both  an 
Austrian  and  a  French  army  out  of  the  city,  the  people 
had  been  profoundly  grateful  to  him,  expressing  their 
feeling  in  various  ways  and  by  presents,  many  ladies 
having  painted  pictures  for  him.* 

*  Some  of  these,  being  views  in  water-colors  of  scenes  in  the  English  Garden  at 
Munich,  are  now  in  the  .possession  of  Mr.  Joseph  B.  Walker,  of  Concord,  N.  H. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  537 

He  writes  from  the 

"  ROYAL  INSTITUTION,  15*  March,  1801. 

"  Bavaria  has  made  an  advantageous  peace  with  France,  but 
has  been  in  danger  of  being  given  to  the  Emperor  of  Germany. 
Professor  Pictet  of  Geneva,  a  great  friend  of  mine,  has  paid  me 
a  visit  off  and  on  for  some  time,  and  I  am  now  about  going  into 
my  own  house  at  Brompton  to  receive  him." 

The  Count  describes  this  house  to  his  daughter  in 
rapturous  terms,  and  regrets  that  she  is  not  there  to  see 
it.  In  September  following,  he  proposes  to  set  out  for 
Bavaria,  the  Elector  having  kindly  invited  him  to  return, 
with  assurances  of  his  warm  friendship,  and  that,  though 
many  salaries  and  pensions  have  been  suspended  through 
the  war,  his  shall  be  paid. 

Accordingly  he  sets  out  in  that  month,'  taking  but 
little  clothing  and  few  effects  with  him,  as,  if  the  Elec- 
tor will  excuse  him,  he  does  not  intend  to  stay  long, 
the  Royal  Institution  still  requiring  his  oversight.  Ac- 
companied by  Professor  Pictet  as  far  as  Calais,  who 
there  left  him  to  go  to  Geneva  by  way  of  Paris,  the 
Count,  having  travelled  some  fifteen  hundred  miles, 
reaches  Munich  by  way  of  Mannheim,  where  he  writes 
as  follows  :  — 

"MUNICH,  2d  October,  1801. 

"  MY  DEAR  SALLY, —  I  arrived  here  late  last  evening,  and 
even  this  morning  went  to  pay  my  respects  to  the  Elector,  who 
received  me  with  all  imaginable  kindness.  He  appears  to  have 
plenty  of  business  for  me  in  an  Academy  he  is  about  building, 
but  as  things  are  not  yet  in  readiness  to  begin  I  am  excused 
from  remaining ;  instead  of  which  I  return  to  England  to  put 
an  end  to  the  work  begun  there,  that  of  the  Royal  Institution. 
I  owe  so  much  to  the  Elector,  it  is  my  duty  to  do  all  in  my 
power  to  give  him  satisfaction.  Besides,  he  says  I  shall  be 
President  of  the  Academy  when  done." 


538  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

The  letter  continues  in  a  cheerful  strain,  as  if  the 
Count  felt  very  happy,  and  found  himself  at  home 
again.  He  speaks  of  numbers  of  his  acquaintance 
of  the  highest  class,  all  of  whom  received  him  kindly, 
as  if  they  were  as  glad  to  see  him  as  he  was  to  find  him- 
self once  more  surrounded  by  the  friends  he  loved  and 
respected,  amid  scenes  where  he  had  enjoyed  great 
privileges  in  the  vigor  of  his  life  for  so  many  years. 
Again  he  writes  :  "  I  leave  Munich  to-morrow,  ijth 
October,  1801.  I  have  the  honor  to  accompany  Prince 
George  of  Mecklenburg  Strelitz,  brother  to  the  Queen 
of  Prussia,  as  likewise  the  Princess  of  Taxis,  a  friend 
of  mine,  who  lives  at  Dillingen,  where  we  go  first, 
spending  two  or  three  days,  then  to  Mannheim,  on  a 
visit  of  two  or  three  days  there.'* 

At  Mannheim  resided  the  Baroness  de  Kalbe,  a  very 
particular  friend  of  the  Count,  and  of  whom  a  fine  por- 
trait was  left  among  the  effects  of  the  Countess. 

There  was  a  great  fete  made  for  the  party  at  Dillin- 
gen. Five  princes  and  six  princesses  sat  down  to  the 
banquet,  and  there  was  a  masked  ball  in  the  evening. 
The  Count  writes  :  "  I  had  slept  but  little  for  some 
previous*  nights,  and  went  to  bed  about  twelve ;  of 
course,  considered  early  for  such  entertainments.  I 
found  Laura  (the  Baroness  of  Kalbe)  in  perfect  health, 
and  as  enchanting  as  ever.  She  sends  you  a  thousand 
compliments." 

The  Count  writes  from  Paris,  25th  October,  1801  : 
"  I  arrived  here  to-day  at  three  o'clock,  and  propose 
staying  ten  or  twelve  days.  Shall  set  about  seeing  the 
sights,  but  am  somewhat  fatigued,  having  travelled  in 
five  days  three  hundred  and  ninety  miles." 

The  daughter  says  this  was  her  father's  first  visit  to 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  539 

Paris.  The  reception  which  he  met  was  <c  simply  en- 
chantment." It  appeared  to  him  then  as  if  there  were 
no  other  spot  in  the  world  worth  looking  at,  no  other 
acquaintance  worth  cultivating.  His  inventions  were 
in  common  use;  his  name  was  known  throughout  the 
whole  country :  he  was  making  a  world  of  acquaint- 
ances, "  particularly  that  of  a  lady  the  daughter  was  to 
hear  more  about  in  the  end."  Parties  were  made  for  him 
every  day.  "  The  Count  was  put  into  such  good  humor 
that  he  even  sends  compliments  from  some  Munich 
gentlemen  whom  he  finds  there,  that  the  daughter  had 
forgotten  or  never  knew.  Ladies  at  Munich,  forgotten 
till  now,  in  these  moments  of  joy  desired  to  be  remem- 
bered to  the' daughter.  Luckily  some  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  earth  have  remembrance  of  the  daughter,  for  soon 
this  heaven  on  earth  was  to  make  her  father  forget  her." 
In  a  letter  dated  at  Brompton,  January  15,  1802,  the 
Count  writes  of  having  returned  on  the  2oth  of  the  pre- 
ceding month.  He  had  been  three  months  on  the  Con- 
tinent, spending  seven  weeks  of  the  time  in  Paris.  He 
intended  to  enjoy  again  the  delights  of  the  French  capi- 
tal on  his  way,  in  the  course  of  the  summer,  to  Munich. 
It  was  his  full  intention  to  get  excused  from  any  longer 
residence  at  Munich,  though  the  Elector  continued 
friendly  to  him.  The  Count  mentions  having  just  re- 
ceived from  him  a  very  gracious  letter,  in  which  the 
Elector  expresses  his  pleasure  at  the  cordiality  extended 
towards  Rumford  in  France,  and  advises  him  to  culti- 
vate an  acquaintance  with  a  certain  lady  there,  whom 
he  knew  by  reputation  as,  among  other  attractions,  hav- 
ing great  wealth.  When  he  made  this  second  visit  to 
Paris,  the  Count  accepted  an  invitation  which  he  had 
received  to  lodge  with  the  Bavarian  ambassador. 


540  .  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Before  he  left  England  again,  Rumford  published 
more  of  his  Philosophical  Papers  and  new  editions 
of  his  Essays,  which  brought  him  some  hundreds  of 
pounds.  He  also  continued  to  work  very  diligently  for 

his  Institution. 

• 

Dating  from  Brompton,  May  6,  1802,  he  writes: 
"  In  three  days  I  shall  set  out  for  Dover,  on  my  way  to 
Paris,  where  I  expect  to  stay  four  or  five  weeks,  and 
then  to  proceed  to  Munich."  He  purposes  to  take 
with  him  two  carriages  and  much  baggage.  On  quitting 
England  the  Count  makes  mention  of  the  melancholy 
of  his  friend,  Lady  Palmerston,  at  the  loss  of  Lord 
Palmerston. 

Writing  from  Paris,  June  25,.  1802,  the  Count  says: 
cc  I  did  not.  propose  to  stay  here  long,  but  the  Elector 
has  written  commissioning  me  to  transact  some  business 
for  him  of  a  political  nature,  in  which  he  is  much  inter- 
ested." Sir  Charles  Blagden  was  with  him  in  Paris, 
and  accompanied  him  to  Munich.  From  this  latter 
place  the  Count  dates  a  letter  September  i,  1802,  men- 
tioning his  arrival  there  from  Paris  on  the  previous 
week.  He  found  the  Elector  living  with  his  family  at 
his  palace  at  Nymphenberg,  very  quietly.  Here  the 
Count  met  with  a  hearty  reception,  and  had  a  general 
invitation  to  visit  at  his  pleasure.  He  found  his  Eng- 
lish Garden  grown  more  beautiful  than  ever,  the  Elector 
sparing  no  expense  upon  it.  But  his  House  for  the 
Poor  had  not  been  well  attended  to,  though  there  were 
few  or  no  beggars  to 'be  met  with  in  the  streets.  The 
Count  says  that  he  was  received  by  the  public  with  the 
most  flattering  marks  of  esteem  and  respect.  The  Em- 
peror of  Russia  sent  him  an  invitation  to  make  a  visit 
to  St.  Petersburg.  This  invitation  was  reinforced  by 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  541 

the  Elector,  whose  oldest  son  was  to  marry  the  Em- 
peror's sister.  But  the  Count  could  not  make  up  his 
mind  to  the  undertaking.  He  writes  :  "  My  health 
requires  that  I  should  keep  more  quiet.  It  is  all  I  ask 
here.  I  have  and  ask  no  augmentation  of  appoint- 
ments. Many  cannot  understand  why  I  am  not  more 
anxious  for  places  and  money.  People  even  pretend 
I  am  going  to  be  Minister  of  State  ;  but  for  a  cer- 
tainty I  am  not,  neither  do  I  desire  to  be.  I  want 
only  quiet." 

In  her  summary  of  a  letter  from  her  father,  dated  at 
Mannheim,  November  30,  1802,  Sarah  says  that  "  he 
alludes  to  his  love  concern  :  says  he  has  got  into  full 
employment  at  Munich,  but  would  rather  be  in  Paris; 
and  the  certain  lady  would  rather  have  him  there,  — 
meaning  the  widow  Lavoisier.  Oh  !  in  Paris  were  cen- 
tred all  charms.  He  did  not  know  the  fate  that  awaited 
him  in  that  country." 

Writing  again  from  Munich,  January  22,  1803, 
Rumford,  evidently  n'ot  meaning  to  remain,  says  he  is 
unsettled  there,  and  therefore  could  not  conveniently 
have  his  daughter  with  him,  but  that  at  a  future  time, 
not  far  distant,  he  would  attempt  it.  He  was  living 
in  considerable  style,  having  his  servants,  the  Aich- 
ners,  with  him,  with  his  equipages.  While  he  was  at 
Munich,  he  was  joined  by  Madame  Lavoisier,  and  with 
her  he  made  the  tour  to  Switzerland,  as  already  men- 
tioned. 

The  Count  writes  to  his  daughter  from  Paris,  Rue 
St.  Lazare,  November  30,  1803,  and  describes  himself 
as  most  happy,  seeing  interesting  sights  and  receiving 
the  most  flattering  attentions.  He  appears  to  have  en- 
tered with  much  zest  into  the  pleasures  and  amusements 


542  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

of  the  place.  The  daughter,  in  her  frank  comments, 
does  not  keep  the  secrets  which  a  filial  heart  generally 
protects.  She  says,  — 

"  Without  being  entirely  free  from  a  sense  of  self-conse- 
quence, —  more  generally  known  by  the  name  of  vanity,  —  he 
must  have  thought  himself  superior  to  anything  he  was  before. 
In  Germany  he  was  naturally  smiled  upon  for  his  ingenuity  and 
his  good  works.  But  here  he  was  always  addressed  with  a  very 
peculiar  grace,  that  was  flattering,  while  he  had  nothing  to  do 
but  to  listen  to  sweet  tones.  His  method  of  feeding  the  poor, 
that  for  providing  for  the  army,  in  short,  all  his  plans,  seemed  to 
be  put  into  execution  throughout  the  country,  as  if  all  benevo- 
lent genius  had  been  asleep,  or  none  had  ever  before  existed. 
Who,  without  being  different  from  every  one  else,  could  stand 
all  this  ?  The  Count  was  frail,  like  others.  Parties  out  of 
number  were  made  for  him." 

The  letter  of  the  Count  to  his  daughter,  relating  to 
his  intended  marriage,  given  on  a  subsequent  page, 
asking  for  certain  certificates  from  Woburn  and  Con- 
cord, will  be  found  to  .be  devoted  to  matters  of  fact. 
The  following  extract  is  from  one  written  about  the 
same  time,  which  was  dictated  by  sentiment:  — 

"  I  shall  withhold  this  information  from  you  no  longer.  I 
really  do  think  of  marrying,  though  I  am  not  yet  absolutely 
determined  on  matrimony.  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  this 
very  amiable  woman  in  Paris,  who,  I  believe,  would  have  no 
objection  to  having  me  for  a  husband,  and  who  in  all  respects 
would  be  a  proper  match  for  me.  She  is  a  widow,  without 
children,  never  having  had  any  ;"  is  about  my  own  age,  enjoys 
good  health,  is  very  pleasant  in  society,  has  a  handsome  fortune 
at  her  own  disposal,  enjoys  a  most  'respectable  reputation,  keeps 
a  good  house,  which  is  frequented  by  all  the  first  Philosophers 
and  men  of  eminence  in  the  science  and  literature  of  the  age, 
or  rather  of  Paris.  And  what  is  more  than  all  the  rest,  is 
goodness  itself.  ....  She  is  very  clever  (according  to  the 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  543 

English  signification  of  the  word)  j  in  short,  she  is  another  Lady 
Palmerston.  She  has  been  very  handsome  in  her  day,  and  even 
now,  at  forty-six  or  forty-eight,  is  not  bad-looking  ;  of  a  mid- 
dling size,  but  rathej:  en  bon  point  than  thin.  She  has  a  great 
deal  of  vivacity,  and  writes  incomparably  well." 

The  Count  had  left  Paris  on  the  loth  of  August,  and 
in  the  above  letter,  written  on  the  22d  of  January  follow- 
ing, he  speaks  of  having  received  the  ninety-second  let- 
ter from  the  lady.  Sarah  gives  as  a  proof  that  her  father 
was  at  this  time  in  extreme  good-humor  the  fact  that  he 
pays  her  a  most  flourishing  compliment  on  her  letter- 
writing, —  the  daughter  "  being  then  in  the  simple 
wilds  of  America,  instead  of  amid  the  brilliancy  and 
refinement  of  the  Court  of  Munich." 

The  Count  soon  after  writes  of  the  lady :  cc  She  is 
fond  of  travelling,  and  wishes  to  make  the  tour  of  Italy 
with  me.  She  appears  to  be  most  sincerely  attached  to 
me,  and  I  esteem  and  love  her  very  much." 

The  daughter  adds :  cc  The  Elector,  as  if  in  true 
parental  kindness  to  the  Count,  from  a  motive  of  put- 
ting him  more  in  competition  with  the  rich  lady  of 
Paris,  settles  upon  him  at  this  time  four  thousand 
florins  a  year,  in  addition  to  former  appointments.  The 
Elector,  formerly  Duke  of  Deux  Ponts,  must  have 
been  very  good." 

On  the  yth  of  February,  1804,  the  Count  writes 
again  from  Paris.  He  and  Madame  Lavoisier  were  then 
making  preparations  for  their  marriage.  She  deposited 
in  his  name  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  livres 
in  the  five-per-cent  French  funds,  which  was  to  go  to  the 
survivor  of  the  three,  —  herself,  himself,  or  his  daugh- 
ter. An  income  of  six  thousand  a  year  out  of  her  own 
property  was  secured  to  Madame  Lavoisier.  Her  house 


544  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

in  Paris,  as  well  as  the  Count's  at  Brompton,  was  to 
revert  to  the  survivor  of  the  two.  A  further  agreement, 
to  which  reference  will  by  and  by  be  made,  appears  to 
have  been  entered  into  between  the  parties,  as  to  the 
retaining  by  the  lady  of  the  name  of  her  former  husband. 
At  this  stage  of  the  arrangements,  the  Count  ascer- 
tained that  requirements  of  law  in  France  made  it  neces- 
sary for  him  to  obtain  certain  documents  from  America. 
The  following  is  a  letter  from  him  to  his  daughter :  — 

"PARIS,  2  July,  1804. 

"  MY  DEAR  SALLY, —  This  letter,  which  will  be  entirely 
devoted  to  very  serious  and  important  business,  will,  no  doubt, 
obtain  your  serious  attention. 

"  In  order  to  be  able  to  complete  in  a  legal  manner  some 
domestic  arrangements  of  great  importance  to  me  and  to  you, 
I  have  lately  found,  to  my  no  small  surprise,  that  certificates  of 
my  birth  and  of  the  death  .of  my  former  wife  are  indispensably 
necessary.  You  can,  no  doubt,  very  easily  procure  them,  —  the 
one  from  the  Town  Clerk  of  Woburn,  the  other  from  the 
Town  Clerk  of  Concord.  And  I  request  that  you  would  do 
it  without  loss  of  time,  and  send  them  to  me  under  cover,  or 
rather  in  a  letter  addressed  to  me,  and  sent  to  the  care  of  my 
Bankers  in  London.  As  an  accident  may  possibly  happen  to 
that  letter,  I  beg  you  would  at  the  same  time  send  another  set 
of  these  certificates  directly  to  Paris,  addressed  to  me,  Rue  de 
Clichy,  No.  356. 

"  I  should  imagine  that  the  Certificate  of  my  Birth  might  be 
drawn  up  in  the  following  form  :  — 

"  This  is  to  Certify  that  Benjamin  Thompson,  now  Count 
of  Rumford  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  the  Son  of  the  late 
Mr.  Benjamin  Thompson,  of  Woburn,  in  the  County  of  Mid- 
dlesex, in  the  State  of  Massachusetts,  Yeoman,  and  Ruth  his 
wife,  was  born  at  Woburn,  on  the  26th  day  of  March,  in  the 
year  1753.  In  witness  whereof,  I,  the  Town  Clerk  of  the  said 
Woburn,  have  hereunto  put  my  name,  &c. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  545 

ct  The  other  Certificate  might,  I  should  suppose,  read  thus:  — 

"  I,  N.  N.,  Town  Clerk  of  Concord,  in  the  State  of  New 
Hampshire,  do  hereby  certify  that  it  appears  by  the  public  rec- 
ords of  this  Town,  that  Sarah,  the  late  wife  of  Benjamin 
Thompson,  Esq.,  formerly  of  this  place,  now  a  Count  of  the 

Holy   Roman  Empire,  died  at  this    place    on    the day  of 

the  month  of in  the  year .     In  witness  whereof,  &c. 

"  If  these  forms  should  be  objected  to,  you  will  send  me  such 
as  you  can  procure. 

"  To  the  above  two  Certificates,  which  are  indispensably 
necessary,  you  may  as  well  add  a  third,  which  may  be  use- 
ful. That  is  to  say,  a  Certificate  from  the  Town  Clerk  of 
Woburn  of  the  death  of  my  Father,  and  the  time  when  it 
happened. 

"  The  new  French  Civil  Code  renders  these  formalities  neces- 
sary. 

"  As  by  that  Code  the  consent  of  Parents  is  necessary  in 
order  to  a  marriage  being  legal,  I  desire  you  would  procure  for 
me  the  consent  of  my  Mother,  expressed  in  the  form  here- 
unto annexed,  neatly  drawn  up,  and  neatly  and  properly 
signed.  You  can  give  your  personal  assistance  in  that  business. 

"  Two  like  copies  of  that  consent  must  be  sent  with  the  two 
copies  of  the  Certificates,  and  no  time  must  be  lost  in  procuring 
and  sending  them. 

u  I  recommend  the  enclosed  letter  to  your  particular  care, 
and  I  desire  that  you  would  deliver  it  with  your  own  hands, 
and  as  soon  as  possible. 

"  As  I  have  long  since  authorized  you  to  settle  my  affairs 
with  your  brother,  I  request  that  they  may  be  finally  settled 
immediately,  and  receipts  passed.  You  will  send  me  his  receipt, 
or  a  copy  of  it. 

"  With  regard  to  the  lands  at  Amariscoggin,  I  give  up  all 
claim  to  them,  and  you  may  dispose  of  them  just  as  you 
shall  think  proper,  either  to  your  Uncle  Walker  or  to  your 
brother. 

"  What  I  insist  on  is  a  final  settlement,  and  complete  and 
legal  discharge  both  from  your  brother  and  your  uncle. 


546  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"  Give  my  best  compliments  to  Colonel  Baldwin  and  to  all 
my  old  friends.  I  do  not  yet  despair  of  seeing  America  once 
more.  Adieu,  my  dear  Sally. 

"  Ever  Yours  most  affectionately, 

"  R." 

The  Countess,  of  course,  asks  aid  from  Colonel 
Baldwin. 

"  BOSTON,  September  18,  1804. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  My  father  has  written  to  me  to  desire  me 
to  eet  of  the  town  clerk  of  Woburn  certificates  of  his  birth 

o 

and  the  death  of  his  father,  and  has  sent  a  form  by  which  he 
would  wish  to  have  them  drawn  up.  I  should  take  it  as  a 
particular  favor  if  you  will  procure  for  me  two  certificates  of 
each  from  the  town  clerk,  couched  in  the  same  terms,  or  as 
nearly  as  possible  in  the  same  terms,  and  properly  signed.  I 
wish  two,  as  I  am  to  send  duplicates,  for  fear  one  set  might  be 
lost. 

"  It  seems  there  is  now  a  regulation  in  France  which  makes 
certificates  of  a  like  nature  necessary,  as  likewise  the  consent 
of  parents,  if  living,  in  order  to  render  a  marriage  legal.  A 
vessel  is  shortly  expected  to  sail  for  France,  and,  if  possible,  I 
should  be  very  glad  to  procure  these  certificates  and  forward 
them  to  my  father  by  this  conveyance. 

"Yours,  &c.  in  haste, 

"S.  RUMFORD. 

"  Please  to  obtain  a  certificate  of  my  paternal  grandfather's 
death,  in  the  following  form  :  — 

"  I, ,  Town  Clerk  of  Woburn,  in  the  State  of  Massachu- 
setts, do  hereby  certify  that Thompson,  of  this  place, 

Father  of  Benjamin  Thompson,  Esq.,  formerly  of  this  place, 

now  Count  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  was  buried ,  as 

appears  by  the  public  records." 

The  certificates  undoubtedly  were  duly  sent  as  de- 
sired. The  acquaintance  between  the  Count  and  the 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  547 

lady  had  been  long  and  intimate  enough  —  including 
that  severe  trial  of  the  disposition,  whether  of  man  or 
woman,  the  experiences  of  travel — to  have  made  their 
union  a  propitious  one. 

In  view  of  his  marriage,  and  when  he  sent  to  his 
daughter  for  the  necessary  certificates,  the  Count  had 
written  to  his  mother:  "The  lady  I  am  to  espouse  is 
four  years  younger  than  myself,  and  is  of  a  most  ami- 
able and  respectable  character." 

The  parties  had  been  in  treaty  for  a  house  in  Passy, 
but  upon  examination  they  found  the  title  defective. 
They  then  made  purchase  of  one  in  the  midst  of  a 
garden  of  near  two  acres,  in  the  Rue  d'Anjou,  and  in 
the  finest  part  of  Paris.  The  price  paid  for  this  was 
six  thousand  guineas,  but  very  much  more  was  laid  out 
under  the  Count's  directions  and  orders,  for  alterations, 
additions,  and  improvements. 

Sarah  mentions  that  Captain  and  Mrs.  Barnard  of 
Boston,  who  had  taken  charge  of  her  on  her  voyage  to 
join  her  father,  were  in  Paris  at  this  time,  and  went 
often  to  see  the  Count.  They  brought  her  from  him, 
on  their  return,  some  rich  jewelry  and  lace  as  presents. 

Many  letters,  she  says,  failed  to  reach  her  on  account 
of  the  casualties  of  war.  Her  father's  marriage  mean- 
while was  delayed,  partly,  no  doubt,  by  the  necessity  of 
obtaining  the  certificates  from  America,  and  partly  by 
another  visit  to  Bavaria,  which  the  Count,  it  seems, 
against  his  will,  was  constrained  to  make  at  the  call  of 
the  Elector,  for  his  aid  in  organizing  the  Academy  of 
Arts  and  Sciences.  The  Count  felt  that  this  delay 
might  be  unfavorable  to  his  prospects,  but  his  sense  of 
obligation  to  the  Elector  compelled  him  to  go.  He 
writes  as  follows  from  Munich,  June  18,  1805:  — 


548  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

"I  left  Paris  the  9th  of  June,  and  arrived  here  the  i6th. 
My  stay  here  is  uncertain,  for  many  things  are  yet  wanting  that 
are  indispensably  necessary  for  the  success  of  such  an  establish- 
ment as  the  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences.  I  continue  to 
pursue  my  Philosophical  researches,  and  that  will  ever  be  the 
most  pleasing  occupation  I  can  have.  I  am  in  the  same  lodg- 
ings I  occupied  when  I  was  here  two  years  ago,  and  Aichner 
and  his  whole  family  serve  me.  But  I  fancy  I  shall  soon 
return  to  the  house  I  was  in  when  you  were  with  me,  and  to 
the  same  apartments,  which  I  shall  like  better  than  any  others. 
The  Countess  of  Nogarola  sends  you  a  thousand  compliments." 

His  stay  in  Munich  was  short,  as  the  troubles  of  the 
time  compelled  even  the  Elector  to  leave  the  city.  On 
September  17  the  Count  is  again  in  Paris. 

The  following  very  interesting  letter  bears  date  — 

"  PARIS,  25th  October,  1805,  Rue  d'Anjou,  No.  39. 

"You  will  have  intelligence  by  the  papers  of  events  that 
have  lately  taken  place  in  Germany.  Foreseeing  the  Storm,  I 
left  Munich  the  day  before  the  Elector  left  it.  I  have  brought 
Aichner  and  his  whole  family,  not  being  willing  to  leave  them 
behind.  I  succeeded  in  so  winding  up  my  affairs  in  Bavaria  as 
in  the  future  to  be  able  to  live  where  I  please.  I  shall,  of 
course,  go  from  time  to  time  to  pay  my  respects  to  the  Elector, 
for  he  has  ever  treated  me  with  too  much  respect  for  me  to  be 
negligent  on  that  account  towards  him. 

"  I  have  informed  you  before  of  the  arrangements  Madame 
Lavoisier  and  I  had  made  in  case  of  our  marriage,  and  which  in 
fact  took  place  yesterday. 

"  I  have  the  best-founded  hopes  of  passing  my  days  in  peace 
and  quiet  in  this  paradise  of  a  place,  made  what  it  is  by  me,  — 
my  money,  skill,  and  directions.  In  short,  it  is  all  but  a  para- 
dise. Removed  from  the  noise  and  bustle  of  the  street,  facing 
full  to  the  South,  in  the  midst  of  a  beautiful  garden  of  more 
than  two  acres,  well  planted  with  trees  and  shrubbery.  The 
entrance  from  the  street  is  through  an  iron  gate,  by  a  beautiful 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  549 

winding  avenue,  well  planted,  and  the  porter's  lodge  is  by  the 
side  of  this  gate  j  a  great  bell  to  be  rung  in  case  of  cere- 
monious visits." 

The  daughter's  comment  on  this  letter  is:  "  It  seems 
there  had  been  an  acquaintance  between  these  parties  of 
four  years  before  marriage.  It  might  be  thought  a  long 
space  of  time  enough  for  perfect  acquaintance.  But,  ah 
Providence  !  thy  ways  are  past  finding  out." 

An  interval,  though  a  very  brief  one,  of  cheerfulness 
and  satisfaction  was  enjoyed  by  the  Count  after  his 
marriage.  There  are  but  two  letters  to  his  daughter 
recognizing  this  state  of  content  and  pleasant  anticipa- 
tion. He  informs  her  that  he  left  Munich  under  the 
pleasantest  relations  with  the  Bavarian  sovereign  and 
his  friends  at  that  court  He  had  received  a  letter 
from  Maximilian,  congratulating  him  on  his  marriage, 
and  approving  of  his  settling  himself  in  France,  and  at 
the  same  time  adding  four  thousand  florins  a  year  to  his 
pay,  that  he  might  feel  on  easier  circumstances  with  his 
lady.  The  Count's  letter,  dated  Paris,  Rue  d'Anjou, 
December  20,  1805,  two  months  after  his  marriage,  is 
as  follows  :  — 

"  MY  DEAR  SALLY,  —  I  gave  up  my  lodgings  on  quitting 
Munich,  and  managed  so  as  to  settle  all  concerns  of  business. 
I  flatter-  myself  I  am  settled  down  here  for  life,  far  removed 
from  wars  and  all  arduous  duties,  as  a  recompense  fcr  past 
services,  with  plenty  to  live  upon,  and  at  liberty  to  pursue  my 
own  natural  propensities,  such  as  have  occupied  me  through 
life,  —  a  life,  as  I  try  to  fancy,  that  may  come  under  the  de- 
nomination of  a  benefit  to  mankind. 

"  I  brought  all  the  Aichners  with  me,  two  of  their  boys 
excepted,  who  are  placed  in  the  army,  —  one  as  corporal;  the 
youngest,  George,  about  sixteen,  as  a  drummer.  The  little  girl 
named  for  you  and  the  Countess  [Nogarola],  Mary  Sarah,  — 


550  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

you  two  being  considered  God-Mothers  to  her,  —  is  very  small 
of  her  age,  considered  a  dwarf.  But  she  is  very  clever  and 
interesting,  and  excites  universal  attention.  Madame  seems  to 
take  quite  a  fancy  to  her,  allowing  her  to  dine  with  us  at  a  side- 
board when  we  have  no  company.  The  whole  family  of 
Aichners,  consisting  of  six,  with  Father  and  Mother,  are  so 
good,  and  those  of  an  age  to  work  so  industrious,  they  cannot 
be  considered  a  burden,  and  will  ever  be  a  comfort  to  me,  being, 
as  it  were,  my  family.  And  next,  my  dear,  I  hope  to  get  .you. 
But  next  spring  we  are  going  to  travel  into  Italy  and  the  South 
of  France,  to  be  gone  two  years,  so  you  must  patiently  stay 
where  you  are  for  the  present. 

"  You  will  wish  to  know  what  sort  of  a  place  we  live  in. 
The  house  is  rather  an  old-fashioned  concern,  but  in  a  plot  of 
over  two  acres  of  land,  in  the  very  centre  and  finest  part  of 
Paris,  near  the  Champs  Elyssees  and  the  Tuilleries  and  principal 
boulevards.  I  have  already  made  great  alterations  in  our  place, 
and  shall  do  a  vast  deal  more.  When  these  are  done,  I  think 
Madame  de  Rumford  will  find  it  in  a  very  different  condition 
from  that  in  which  it  was,  — that  being  very  pitiful,  with  all  her 
riches. 

"  Our  style  of  living  is  really  magnificent.  Madame  is  ex- 
ceedingly fond  of  company,  and  makes  a  splendid  figure  in  it 
herself.  But  she  seldom  goes  out,  keeping  open  doors,  —  that 
is  to  say,  to  all  the  great  and  worthy,  such  as  the  philosophers, 
members  of  the  Institute,  ladies  of  celebrity,  &c. 

"  On  Mondays  we  have  eight  or  ten  of  the  most  noted  of 
our  associates  at  dinner.  (Then  we  live  on  bits  the  rest  of  the 
week.)  Thursdays  are  devoted  to.  evening  company,  of  ladies 
and  gentlemen,  without  regard  to  numbers.  Tea  and  fruits  are 
given,  the  guests  continuing  till  twelve  or  after.  Often  superb 
concerts  are  given,  with  the  finest  vocal  and  instrumental  per- 
formers." 

In  spite  of  the  hopefulness  in  some  of  the  above 
sentences,  the  Count  seems  already  to  have  felt  some 
misgivings  during  this  moderate  honeymoon.  He  was 


Life  of  Count  RumforcL  551 

passionately  fond  of  music,  though  his  lady  haa  no  pre- 
dilection for  it.  Perhaps,  as  the  daughter  suggests,  if 
her  father  had  gone  on  his  intended  tour  with  his  wife, 
which  the  war  prevented,  changes  of  scene  and  compan- 
ionship might  have  averted  the  result  which  was  to 
follow. 

Some  interesting  particulars  relating  to  political  affairs 
are  given  in  the  other  of  these  two  letters,  dated  Paris, 
January  15,  1806.  The  Count  tells  his  daughter  that 
the  Elector  was  crowned  King  on  the  first  of  the  month, 
and  that  the  nuptials  of  the  Princess  Augusta  with  Prince 
Eugene,  Viceroy  of  Italy,  will  be  celebrated  on  this, 
the  fifteenth  day.  The  Emperor  and  Empress  of  France 
are  still  at  Munich,  but  are  shortly  expected  at  Paris. 

After  specifying  some  of  the  new  partitions  of  ter- 
ritory resulting  from  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Austria, 
proclaimed  at  Paris  on  the  date  of  his  writing,  the 
Count  proceeds  :  — 

"  The  newspapers  will  acquaint  you  with  the  other  particu- 
lars of  this  Peace,  which  will  occasion  a  great  change  in  the 
political  state  of  Germany,  as,  in  fact,  of  all  Europe.  I  hope 
that  I  shall  not,  and  I  do  not  think  that  I  shall,  lose  by  any  of 
these  changes.  At  all  events,  the  Elector,  or  rather  the  new 
King,  has  just  written  me  a  very  kind  letter,  giving  me  hopes, 
rather  than  suggesting  fears  of  anything  of  a  disagreeable  nature. 
But  dependencies  like  mine  can  never  be  otherwise  than  uncer- 
tain, as  I  feel  it,  notwithstanding  my  marriage.  I  may  make  a 
change,  after  all,  but  never  certainly  to  the  disadvantage  of  any 
one.  Between  you  and  myself,  as  a  family  secret,  I  am  not  at  all 
sure  that  two  certain  persons  were  not  wholly  mistaken,  in  their 
marriage,  as  to  each  other's  characters.  Time  will  show.  But 
two  months  barely  expired,  I  forebode  difficulties.  Already  I 
am  obliged  to  send  my  good  Germans  home,  —  a  great  discomfort 
to  me  and  wrong  to  them." 


552  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

The  following  letters  from  Colonel  Baldwin,  in  one 
of  which  he  offers  his  congratulations  to  the  Count, 
come  in  their  place  here. 

"  BOSTON,  June  10,  1804. 

"  MY  DEAR  COUNT,  —  Permit  me  to  introduce  to  you  my 
particular  friend  John  Sullivan,  Esq.,  son  of  the  Honorable  and 
much  respected  James  Sullivan,  of  Boston,  who  ranks  with  the 
first  characters  in  this  country. 

"  Mr.  Sullivan  proposes  to  visit  England  and  France,  and 
perhaps  he  may  make  the  tour  of  Europe.  His  object  in  travel- 
ling is  to  obtain  a  greater  knowledge  of  the  world,  and  gratify  a 
curious  and  philosophic  mind.  His  education,  disposition,  and 
manners  render  him  highly  esteemed  and  beloved  by  his  numer- 
ous acquaintances.  His  connections  are  the  most  respectable. 
He  married  a  daughter  of  your  good  friend  and  correspond- 
ent, the  late  Hon.  Thomas  Russell,  Esq.,  who  died  some  years 
since,  universally  lamented. 

"  I  flatter  myself  that  you  will  find  Mr.  Sullivan  a  gentleman 
worthy  your  attention.  Any  civilities  you  may  please  to  confei 
on  him  will  add  to  the  many  favors  already  received. 

"  It  is  a  long  time  since  I  wrote  last,  and  I  believe  it  is  nearly 
as  long  since  I  received  any  communication  from  you.  Perhaps 
I  may  be  one  in  your  debt.  But  be  assured,  my  dear  Count, 
that  I  remember  you  with  as  much  esteem  and  affection  as  ever. 
I  have  had  the  pleasure  frequently  to  hear  of  your  welfare  through 
the  channel  of  your  letters  to  the  Countess,  who  (by  the  way)  is 
often  lamenting  your  long  silence  of  late,  and  tells  me  that  she 
has  received  no  answer  to  a  dozen  letters  she  wrote  you  last  year. 

"I  made  a  visit  to  Windham,  near  Portland,  on  the  2ist  of 
May  last,  to  see  your  good  mother.  I  found  her  in  a  comforta- 
ble state  of  health.  She  had  been  afflicted  some  time  before 
with  rheumatic  complaints,  and  was  not  then  entirely  free  from 
them.  She  asked  me,  with  an  inexpressible  degree  of  anxiety, 
whether  I  thought  we  should  ever  see  you  again  in  this  coun- 
try, to  which  I  could  only  make  but  a  silent  reply. 

"  Your    daughter,  the    Countess,  who    had    been    there    for 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  553 

some  months  on  a  visit,  returned  with  me  to  Boston  the  24th 
#//.,  where  she  remains  at  board  in  Mrs.  Snow's  family.  Your 
daughter  enjoys  good  health  and  spirits,  and  possesses  the  love 
and  esteem  of  her  numerous  and  respectable  acquaintance. 

"  Mr.  Sullivan  will  acquaint  you  how  wonderfully  the  spirit 
of  enterprise  prevails  for  useful  improvements  in  this  country, 
in  projecting  and  effectuating  bridges,  canals,  turnpike  roads, 
and  schemes  for  the  enlargement  of  the  capital. 

"  Pray,  write  me  by  the  first  opportunity,  and  mention  the 
very  day  you  propose  to  embark  for  America,  that  I  may  not  be 
out  of  the  way  on  your  arrival. 

"  I  am,  with  the  highest  respect  and  esteem,  my  dear  Count, 
"  Your  affectionate  friend  and  servant, 

"LOAMMI   BALDWIN. 

"  BENJAMIN,  Count  of  Rumford." 

"WOBURN,  May  9,  1805. 

"  MY  DEAR  COUNT,  —  Permit  me  to  introduce  to  your 
notice  Mr.  Nathaniel  Bond  of  Boston,  son  of  my  particular 
friend,  Colonel  Bond  of  Watertown. 

"  This  young  gentleman  sustains  a  good  reputation,  and  pos- 
sesses a  mind  eagerly  bent  on  improvement,  in  pursuit  of  which 
he  will  embark  to-morrow  for  Europe,  and  contemplates  making 
the  tour  of  that  country.  He  proposes  to  visit  Paris  some  time 
about  October  next.  I  have  taken  the  liberty  to  recommend 
him  to  your  attention  and  favorable  notice,  and  any  civilities 
you  may  please  to  confer  on  him  I  shall  consider  as  done  to 
myself,  and  will  add  to  the  great  amount  of  favors  received. 

"  The  consummation  [of  the  purpose]  of  your  marriage  with 
Lady  Lavoisier  has  lately  been  announced  here.  I  sincerely 
invoke  Heaven  for  your  happiness,  and  that  your  days  may  be 
long  upon  the  land,  and  wish  that  a  few  of  them  which  remain 
may  be  spent  in  your  native  country. 

"  I  am,  with  the  highest  consideration  of  friendship  and 
respect, 

"  My  dear  Count,  your  most  obedient  servant, 

"LOAMMI   BALDWIN. 

"BENJAMIN,  Count  of  Rumford." 


Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

"  WOBURN,  May  29,  1807. 

"  MY  DEAR  COUNT,  —  Permit  me  once  more,  and  I  feel  as 
if  it  would  be  the  last  time,  to  address  you,  not  in  behalf  of  a 
friend  only,  as  heretofore,  but  of  a  son,  dear  and  beloved,  one 
who  has  rendered  himself  eminently  so  by  his  own  merit.  You 
will  naturally  consider  the  emotions  which  agitate  the  breast  of 
a  lone  parent  at  the  departure  of  a  son  destined  to  traverse 
foreign  lands.  He  will  be  deeply  interested  in  the  temper  of 
the  winds  and  the  seas,  the  physical  causes  of  disease,  and  all 
the  incidents  inseparable  from  active  life.  I  pray  God  that  he 
may  be  preserved  from  errors  on  his  part,  and  *  have  but  the 
advice  and  assistance  of  his  friends  if  he  should  happen  to  stand 
in  need  of  them. 

"  I  pray  you,  my  most  respectful  and  respected  friend,  to  con- 
descend to  notice  him.  Give  him  one  smile  on  his  way.  It 
will  revive  and  cheer  his  heart.  Give  him  some  anecdote  of 
former  times  as  evidence  of  your  old  acquaintance  and  his 
home.  If  my  son  should  be  sick,  or  in  trouble,  pray  visit  and 
advise  him." 

Another  letter  from  Sir  Charles  Blagden  to  the 
Countess  proves  him  watchful  over  both  father  and 
daughter. 

In  a  letter  written  to  the  Countess  from  London, 
March  8,  1806,  Sir  Charles,  referring  to  her  father  and 
Madame  Lavoisier,  after  their  marriage,  says :  — 

"  They  are  now  living  together  at  Paris,  and,  as  far  as  I  can 
learn,  very  happily.  I  know  nothing  of  it  from  your  father 
himself,  which  is  not  surprising,  as  I  some  time  since  intimated 
to  him  my  wish  that  our  correspondence  should  cease.  We  are 
not,  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge,  on  terms  of  enmity,  but  it  is 
not  likely  that  any  kind  of  confidence  or  friendship  should  sub- 
sist between  us  again.  This  circumstance  alone  would  make 
me  cautious  of  giving  you  advice,  lest,  if  it  were  such  as  he  did 
not  approve,  he  should  impute  it  to  an  improper  motive.  But 
besides,  I  really  know  too  little  of  the  people  with  whom  you  live, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  555 

and  of  the  gentlemen  who  address  you,  to  judge  what  it  would 
be  best  for  you  to  do.  After  the  adventure  of  the  gentleman 
who  married  so  unexpectedly  had  drawn  upon  you  the  public 
attention,  I  am  sorry  that  you  were  placed  in  so  conspicuous  a 
situation  at  Middletown,  and  that  you  appeared  to  take  so  much 
delight  in  the  attentions  of  another  gentleman,  whom  you  own 
you  had  no  intention  to  marry.  That  conduct  which  is  at- 
tributed only  to  exuberance  of  spirits  and  want  of  experience 
under  twenty  years  of  age  is  thought  after  that  period  to  indi- 
cate levity  ;  and  your  character  ought  now  to  be  remarked  for 
steadiness,  prudence,  and  good  sense.  No  well-judging  friend 
would  advise  you  to  marry  a  man  whom  you  cannot  love.  But 
it  is  equally  dangerous  to  take  a  man  who  is  otherwise  unsuita- 
ble, merely  because  he  happens  under  particular  circumstances 
to  have  flattered  your  imagination.  1  am  aware  how  awkward 
your  situation  is,  and  sincerely  wish  it  were  changed,  either 
by  marriage  or  by  a  call  from  your  fath-er  to  live  with  him. 
Whether  he  has  given  or  ever  will  give  you  such  a  call,  I 
neither  know  nor  can  guess  ;  but  I  particularly  recommend  it 
to  you  never  to  take  any  decisive  step  without  his  previous 
approbation." 

The  variety  of  matters  touched  upon  by  Sarah,  inter- 
spersed with  fragments  of  what  she  saw  fit  to  copy  from 
her  father's  letters,  will  relieve  the  rehearsal  from  the 
character  of  a  mere  repetition  of  the  same  details. 

We  must  call  her  before  us,  during  the  interval  be- 
tween her  first  two  visits  to  Europe,  as  a  person  attract- 
ing considerable  notice  and  regard.  On  her  father's 
account,  independently  of  any  attractions  of  her  own, — 
which  were  in  no  degree  remarkable,  —  she  would  be 
sure  to  receive  attention  and  cordial  hospitality  from 
his  many  friends  in  America.  She  appears  not  to  have 
remained  long  in  any  one  place,  but  to  have  led  rather 
an  unsettled  and  aimless  life,  which  evidently  called 
forth  from  her  father  frequent  remonstrance?,  with  good 


556  Lifj  of  Count  Rumford. 

advice  and  hearty  commendation  when  he  learned  any- 
thing about  her  which  he  could  approve. 

The  most  important  information  given  by  the  Count 
in  a  letter  dated  from  his  new  home  is  that  he  had 
been  presented  to  Bonaparte  as  consul,  and  had  re- 
ceived from  him  permission  to  reside  in  France  and 
also  to  take  his  pension  from  Bavaria.  Ever  happy 
to  send  his  daughter  pleasing  tidings  about  the  place 
where  he  had  spent  so  many  useful  and  happy  years, 
and  had  received  so  many  gratifying  honors  from  the 
former  and  the  present  potentate,  the  Count  gives  some 
account  of  the  then  recent  political  changes  there.  The 
King  of  Bavaria  had  acquired  a  great  increase  of  terri- 
tory and  power  from  a  treaty  of  peace  with  Austria. 
He  had  received  the  Tyrol,  with  the  Bishoprics  of 
Brixen  and  Trent,  and  all  the  countries  bordering  on  the 
Grisons,  between  the  Lake  of  Constance  and  the  Lake 
of  Guarda,  near  Verona.  But  he  ceded  Salzburg  to  his 
brother,  the  Emperor  of  Germany.  The  Count  ex- 
presses the  hope  that  he  shall  not  himself  experience 
anything  unfavorable  in  his  appointments  in  these 
changes.  He  had  had  the  satisfaction  of  a  kind  letter 
from  the  King,  congratulating  him  on  his  marriage. 

Before  the  close  of  the  year  the  Count  begins  to 
complain  of  a  confined  and  uncomfortable  situation  in 
his  domestic  experiences.  "  He  was  withstood  in  his 
plans,  and  met  with  continual  contradictions."  Not- 
withstanding the  little  jarrings  that  had  arisen,  Madame 
de  Rumford  this  year  sent  the  daughter  a  box  of  choice 
millinery  by  some  Boston  ladies  returning  to  their 
country. 

The  Count  had  at  this  time  many  visitors  from 
abroad,  though  none  from  England,  free  communica- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  557 

tion  with  that  country  being  impeded  by  the  war.  This 
was  a  great  discomfort  to  Rumford,  and  was  doubtless 
one  cause  of  his  restlessness,  as  he  depended  much  on 
constant  friendly  intercourse  by  scientific  communica- 
tions with  a  large  number  of  correspondents. 

Another  annoyance  is  indicated  in  the  following 
extract  from  a  letter:  "Aichner  and  his  family  have 
returned  to  Munich.  I  was  obliged  to  hire  a  place  for 
them  some  time  before  they  went  away.  They  did  not 
agree  with  Madame  de  Rumford's  servants,  though  mine 
were  not  in  the  least  to  blame,  for  never  were  there 
more  honest  people  than  Aichner  and  his  wife.  It 
would  have  been  a  great  comfort  to  me  to  have  kept 
them  to  the  end  of  my  life." 

One  of  Aichner' s  children,  as  before  mentioned,  bore 
the  names  of  the  Count's  daughter  and  of  the  Countess 
Nogarola,  Mary  Sarah.  This  little  girl  Madame  de 
Rumford  kept  back,  promising  to  provide  for  her.  She 
made  good  her  promise,  and  in  due  time  the  girl  was 
married  to  a  young  French  marchand,  receiving  from 
her  benefactress  a  marriage-portion  of  twenty  thousand 
francs. 

Indications  of  the  grounds  of  variance  between  the 
Count  and  his  lady  appear  in  a  letter  dated  early  in 
1806.  He  writes  that  Madame  is  very  fond  of  society, 
especially  that  of  agreeable,  well-informed  persons. 
Her  house,  he  says,  "  is  frequented  by  several  of  the 
cleverest  people  in  Paris.  She  seldom  goes  out  of  an 
evening,  but  her  house  is  always  open  to  her  acquaint- 
ance, and  we  pass  few  evenings  without  company. 
[Surah  interpolates,  <c  Just  what  the  Count  hated."]  On 
Mondays  we  have  dinners  of  eight  or  nine,  — -  philoso- 
phers, members  of  the  National  Institute;  on  Tuesday 


558  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

evenings  a  tea-party  of  eighteen  or  twenty  gentlemen 
and  ladies,  staying  till  about  midnight.  Conversation 
their  amusement,  — a  new  method  of  spending  time." 

Sarah  adds  that  her  father  had  no  objection  to  these 
dinners  of  philosophers,  except  that  he  "  had  not  a 
shadow  of  attachment  for  the  pleasures  of  the  table, 
being  neither  an  eater  nor  a  drinker."  But  as  to  the 
tea-parties,  "these  were  enough  to  kill  the  poor  Count 
in  some  few  weeks,  as  a  restraint  upon  his  former  habits." 

There  is  unmistakable  sadness  in  the  following  ex- 
tract from  a  letter  written  at  this  time.  It  brought  also 
a  grievous  disappointment  to  the  daughter,  who  had 
become  very  earnestly  desirous  of  rejoining  her  father  in 
Paris,  as  he  had  promised  that  she  should,  and  of 
sharing  with  him  the  place  which  was  "  a  paradise,' 
and  the  companionship  of  the  lady  who  was  "perfec- 
tion"  and  "goodness  itself." 

"  In  answer  to  your  inquiries  respecting  myself,  I  can  only 
tell  you  that  my  health  continues  good.  But  while  making  a 
paradise  of  our  situation,  affluence,  and  all  the  advantages  of  a 
good  reputation  well  earned,  the  esteem  and  even  united  ap- 
plause of  mankind,  cannot  make  amends  for  disappointments. 
If  I  have  earnestly  wished  to  hear  of  your  being  comfortably 
settled  in  America,  it  is  because  I  have  no  hope  of  seeing  you 
happy  with  me  in  my  present  situation.  It  is  not  always  in  my 
power  to  render  my  house  agreeable  to  my  particular  friends,  a 
disagreeable  restraint  upon  me." 

The  daughter's  comment  on  the  above  is  as  fol- 
lows: — 

"  And  this  for  the  Count  too  !  He  had  led  absolutely  a 
bachelor's  life,  no  one  leaning  on  him  or  controlling  him  during 
his  whole  days.  Of  course,  to  conform  to  others  or  yield  on  his 
own  part  after  this  liberty  enjoyed  by  him  was  naturally  trying. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  559 

And  when  it  is  considered,  too,  that  his  partner  had  had  no  less 
liberty  of  action  than  himself,  it  would  have  been  only  wonder- 
ful had  the  marriage  proved  as  harmonious  as  under  other  cir- 
cumstances it  might  have  been." 

The  Count  writes  under  date  of — 

"  PARIS,  24th  October,  1806. 

"  MY  DEAR  CHILD,  —  This  being  the  first  year's  anniver- 
sary of  my  marriage,  from  what  I  wrote  two  months  after  it 
you  will  be  curious  to  know  how  things  stand  at  present.  I  am 
sorry  to  say  that  experience  only  serves  to  confirm  me  in  the 
belief  that  in  character  and  natural  propensities  Madame  de 
Rumford  and  myself  are  totally  unlike,  and  never  ought  to  have 
thought  of  marrying.  We  are,  besides,  both  too  independent, 
both  in  our  sentiments  and  habits  of  life,  to  live  peaceably 
together,  —  she  having  been  mistress  all  her  days  of  her  actions, 
and  I,  with  no  less  liberty,  leading  for  the  most  part  the  life  of 
a  bachelor.  Very  likely  she  is  as  much  disaffected  towards  me 
as  I  am  towards  her.  Little  it  matters  with  me,  but  1  call  her 
a  female  Dragon,  —  simply  by  that  gentle  name  !  We  have 
got  to  the  pitch  of  my  insisting  on  one  thing  and  she  on 
another. 

"  It  is  possible  that,  had  the  war  ceased  raging,  and  had  we 
gone  into  Italy,  where  she  is  dying  to  go,  and  with  me  too,  she 
having  heard  me  speak  much  of  the  delights  of  that  country, — 
she  having  been  very  happy,  too,  in  travelling  with  me  in 
Switzerland,  —  it  might  have  suspended  difficulties,  but  never  have 
effected  a  cure.  That  is  out  of  the  question.  Indeed,  I  have 
not  the  least  idea  of  continuing  here,  and,  if  possible,  still  less 
the  wish,  and  am  only  planning  in  my  mind  what  step  I  shall 
take  next,  —  to  be  hoped  more  to  my  advantage.  Communica- 
tion with  England  is  prohibited,  and  it  makes  me  sad." 

Again  he  writes,  a  year  later :  — 

"  PARIS,  Rue  d'Anjou,  *4th  Octob.  1807. 

"  I  can  do  no  more,  my  Dear  Sally,  than  simply  give  you  the 
anniversary  of  my  marriage,  for  I  am  still  here,  and  so  far  from 


560  Life  of  Count  Rumfjrd. 

things  getting  better  they  become  worse  every  day.  We  are 
more  violent  and  more  open,  and  more  public,  as  may  really  be 
said,  in  our  quarrels.  If  she  does  not  mind  publicity,  for  a  cer- 
tainty I  shall  not.  As  I  write  the  uncouth  word  quarrels,  I  will 
give  you  an  idea  of  one  of  them. 

"In  the  first  place,  be  it  known  that  this  estate  is  a  joint 
concern.  I  have  as  good  a  right  to  it  as  Madame,  —  she 
having  paid  rather  more  in  the  beginning,  but  I  an  immen- 
sity of  money  in  repairs  and  alterations,  &c.,  &c.,  besides  a 
great  deal  of  my  own  time  and  care  spent  while  we  have  been 
here. 

"  I  am  almost  afraid  to  tell  you  the  story,  my  good  child,  lest 
in  future  you  should  not  be  good  ;  lest  what  I  am  about  relating 
should  set  you  a  bad  example,  make  you  passionate,  and  so  on. 
But  I  had  been  made  very  angry.  A  large  party  had  been 
invited  I  neither  liked  nor  approved  of,  and  invited  for  the  sole 
purpose  of  vexfng  me.  Our  house  being  in  the  centre  of  the 
garden,  walled  around,  with  iron  gates,  I  put  on  my  hat,  walked 
down  to  the  porter's  lodge  and  gave  him  orders,  on  his  peril, 
not  to  let  any  one  in.  Besides,  I  took  away  the  keys.  Madame 
went  down,  and  when  the  company  arrived  she  talked  with 
them, — she  on  one  side,  they  on  the  other,  of  the  high  brick 
wall.  After  that  she  goes  and  pours  boiling  water  on  some  of 
my  beautiful  flowers." 

Six  months  more  of  this  infelicitous  experience  is 
summed  up  in  the  following  extract :  — 

"  PARIS,  Rue  d'Anjou,  St.  Honore,  No.  39,  April  I2*h,  1808. 

"  After  what  you  know,  my  Dear  Sally,  of  my  domestic 
troubles,  you  will  naturally  be  anxious  to  learn  the  present  state 
of  things.  There  are  no  alterations  for  the  better.  On  the 
contrary,  much  worse.  I  have  suffered  more  than  you  can 
imagine  for  the  last  four  weeks  ;  but  my  rights  are  incontestible, 
and  I  am  determined  to  maintain  them.  I  have  the  misfor- 
tune to  be  married  to  one  of  the  most  imperious,  tyrannical, 
unfeeling  women  that  ever  existed,  and  whose  perseverance 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  561 

in  pursuing  an  object  is  equal  to  her  profound  cunning  and 
wickedness  in  framing  it. 

It  is  impossible  to  continue  in  this  way,  and  we  shall  separate. 
I  only  wish  it  was  well  over.  It  is  probable  I  shall  take  a  house 
at  Auteuil,  a  very  pleasant  place,  with  the  Seine  on  one  side 
and  the  Bois  de  Boulogne  on  the  other,  about  a  league  from 
Parts.  I  have  seen  a  very  handsome  house  there  which  I  can 
have,  —  rather  dear,  but  that  matters  little  can  I  but  find  quiet. 
It  would  be  truly  unfortunate,  after  the  King  of  Bavaria's  late 
bounties  joined  to  former  ones,  if  I  could  not  live  more  inde- 
pendently than  with  this  unfeeling,  cunning,  tyrannical  woman. 

"  Little  do  we  know  people  at  first  sight  !  Do  you  preserve 
my  letters  ?  You  will  perceive  that  I  have  given  very  different 
accounts  of  this  woman,  for  lady  I  cannot  call  her. 

u  Now,  my  Dear  Sally,  as  soon  as  I  get  settled,  enjoying 
again  independence,  I  shall  wish  you  to  join  me. 

"In  the  mean  time  believe  me  Your  Affectionate  Father." 

The  Count  bought  the  lease  of  his  villa  at  Auteuil 
in  April,  1808. 

In  a  letter  to  which  the  Countess  assigns  the  date  of 
Paris,  November  29,  1808,  her  father  describes  in  some 
detail  what  will  be  her  situation  if  she  comes  to  live 
with  him.  He  says  he  dines  in  his  own  room,  with 
only  the  little  German  girl  at  the  sideboard,  eating  her 
dinner.  Yet  he  says  habit  has  made  supportable  what 
he  would  have  thought  never  could  be.  But  few  visit- 
ors came  into  his  apartments,  and  only  two  or  three 
were  friends  to  him. 

"  But,"  he  writes,  "alas!  they  can  be  of  little  assistance  to 
me.  Peace  dwells  no  longer  in  my  habitation.  I  breakfast 
quite  alone  in  my  apartment.  Most  of  our  visitors  are  my 
wife's  most  determined  adherents.  Three  evenings  in  the 
week  she  has  small  tea-parties  in  her  apartment,  at  which  I 
am  sometimes  present,  but  where  I  find  little  to  amuse  me. 
This  strange  manner  of  living  has  not  been  adopted  or  con- 
36 


562  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

tinued  by  my  choice,  but  much  against  my  inclinations.  I 
have  waited  with  great,  I  may  say  unexampled,  patience  for  a 
return  of  reason  and  a  change  of  conduct.  But  I  am  firmly 
resolved  not  to  be  driven  from  my  ground,  not  even  by  disgust. 
"  A  separation  is  unavoidable,  for  it  would  be  highly  improper 
for  me  to  continue  with  a  person  who  has  given  me  so  many 
proofs  of  her  implacable  hatred  and  malice." 

For  two  or  three  months  during  the  latter  part  of  the 
Count's  occupancy  of  the  same  house  with  his  wife,  he 
was  seriously  ill. 

He  informs  his  daughter  that  the  King  of  Bavaria, 
having  knowledge  of  his  domestic  discomforts,  had 
recently  written  him  a  letter  that  had  done  him  much 
good.  "  He  speaks  most  kincjly  to  me,  and  encour- 
ages me  to  bear  my  misfortunes  like  a  man  of  firmness 
who  has  nothing  to  reproach  himself  with/' 

The  daughter  at  this  stage  of  the  rupture  gives,  in 
her  comments,  such  light  as  she  can  throw  upon  the 
causes  and  manifestations  of  this  domestic  unhappiness. 
She  says  that  her  father  and  his  wife  disagreed  about 
most  things,  if  not  in  everything,  and  their  alienation 
began  after  the  first  flush  of  friendship  had  brought  them 
together. 

"  One  wanted  this,  the  other  wanted  that.  Madame  loved 
company,  the  Count  loved  quiet.  One  was  lavish  in  money 
for  entertainments ;  the  other  had  no  objection  to  spending 
money,  but  wished  to  see  something  come  of  it,  in  short,  im- 
provements. The  lady  said,  calling  him  still  by  tender  names, 
'  My  Rumford  would  make  me  very  happy  could  he  but  keep 
quiet/  The  Count,  on  his  side,  says,  '  I  should  not  mind 
entertainments,  but  I  hate  to  live  on  the  scraps  df  them  ever 
after.'  With  occasional  grumblings  they  got  on  for  a  while. 
The  Count,  still  engaged  on  his  favorite  subjects,  —  light  and 
heat,  —  invented  a  lamp.  The  French  are  fond  of  jokes,  and, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  563 

as  the  story  goes,  the  light  issuing  from  one  of  the  lamps  of  his 
invention  was  so  vivid  that  the  workman,  in  taking  it  home  to 
show  it,  got  his  eyes  so  injured  and  became  so  blinded  that  he 
could  not  see  his  way  home,  and  had  to  stay  out  all  night 
in  the  Bois  de  Boulogne.  Even  Cuvier  relates  the  joke. 

"The  bon-mot,  at.  the  Count's  expense,  likewise  originated  in 
Paris  at  this  time,  making  fun  of  his  ways  for  securing  an 
economical  feeding  of  the  poor  and  the  troops.  The  soldiers, 
when  partaking  of  an  indifferent  meal,  called  it  l  a  la  Rum- 
ford  ! ' 

"  People  in  society  have  a  part  to  act,  in  giving  and  accepting 
from  others  entertainments.  The  Count  in  either  case  could 
not  set  himself  down  in  a  corner  pursuing  his  investigations  into 
things  as  he  wished  to  do.  He  must  make  himself  agreeable, 
and  could  do  so.  He  was  one  of  the"  smallest  eaters,  and  one 
who  drinks  less  than  he  did  is  seldom  met  with.  Thus  at  ban- 
quets, while  others  would  be  sipping  their  fine  nectar,  smacking 
their  lips  at  choice  viands,  cutting  their  eyes  to  see  what  was 
coming  next,  discussing  eatables,  or  praising  them  by  eating 
enormously  of  what  was  presented  to  them, — the  Count  would 
set  down  his  glass  brimming  full,  from  its  not  having  once 
approached  his  lips',  or  he  would  move  away  his  plate  after  it 
had  the  tiniest  piece  of  some  simple  food  upon  it.  But  upon 
him  would  devolve  most  of  the  mental  honors  of  the  feast. 
The  writer  remembers  an  occasion  of  this  kind,  when,  as  all  the 
guests  were  eating,  he  discoursed  upon  the  bread-fruit." 

The  Count  had  prepared  his  daughter  in  his  last 
quoted  letter  to  hear  of  his  separation  from  his  wife. 
In  another,  soon  succeeding  it,  he  told  her  that  the 
separation  was  to  be  brought  about  by  the  arbitration 
of  friends.  He  intimates,  however,  that  he  did  not 
expect  to  .remain  permanently  in  the  house  which  he 
proposed  to  take  at  Auteuil,  and  that  he  did  not  look 
to  find  perfect  peace  by  himself  there,  for  he  should 
there  be  surrounded  by  Madame's  friends  and  adhe- 


564  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

rents,  and,  of  course,  she  had  hundreds  where  he  had 
one. 

M.  Guizot,  a  very  intimate  friend,  in  her  later  years, 
of  the  lady  thus  repudiated,  writes  in  his  admiring 
tribute,  soon  to  be  quoted,  that  the  separation  took 
place  amicably,  on  the  joth  of  June,  1809.  The  terms 
of  the  marriage-contract  were  respected  as  regards  the 
joint  property  of  the  parties.  The  Count  had  at  the 
time  a  hundred  thousand  francs  in  the  French  funds, 
mostly  from  a  gift  made  to  him  by  Madame  Lavoisier; 
and  a  great  part  of  what  he  had  received  from  her  he 
retained,  in  consideration  of  the  large  outlay  he  had  made 
upon  the  house  in  the  Rue  d'Anjou. 

If  an  inference  may  be  drawn  from  the  tone  of  the 
Count's  letters  immediately  following  his  separation 
from  his  wife,  the  sense  of  relief  which  he  experienced 
would  indicate  that  his  previous  situation  had  been  ex- 
ceedingly irksome. 

Thus  he  writes  to  his  daughter :  • — 

" 1  find  myself  relieved  from  an  almost  insupportable  burden. 
I  cannot  repeat  too  much  how  happy  I  am,  —  gaining  every  day 
in  health,  which  from  vexations  had  become  seriously  deranged. 
I  am  persuaded  it  is  all  for  the  best.  After  the  scenes  which  I 
have  recently  passed  through,  I  realize,  as  never  before,  the  sweets 
of  quiet,  liberty,  and  independence.  My  household  consists  of 
the  most  faithful,  honest  people,  attached  to  me,  without  dissen- 
sion, bribery,  or  malice.  And,  above  all,  that  eternal  contra- 
diction. Oh  !  happy,  thrice  happy,  am  I,  to  be  my  own 
man  again  !  " 

He  says  he  intends  to  spend  the  rest  of  his  days  in 
retirement  and  in  philosophical  pursuits.  Yet  he  cannot 
repress  in  any  of  his  letters  resentful  expressions  against 
his  late  partner.  He  now  became  very  anxious  to  have 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  565 

his  daughter  come  to  him,  but  the  obstacles  of  war 
deferred  and  impeded  her  attempt  to  join  him.  He 
had  sent  for  one  of  Aichner's  daughters  to  wait  upon 
her.  To  all  his  other  troubles  was  added  an  increased 
fear  that  his  Bavarian  pension  might  be  suspended. 
The  Count,  intimates  that  his  French  acquaintances 
thought  he  would  not  be  able  to  continue  his  style  of 
living  without  the  assistance  of  his  late  partner.  But 
he  intended  they  should  be  disappointed.  He  had 
hired  his  house  for  life,  and  had  spent  upon  it  nearly  a 
thousand  guineas,  making  it  very  elegant.  His  regu- 
lar expenses  would  be  much  less  than  his  annual  in- 
come. His  health  improved  every  day.  He  was  sur- 
rounded by  good  and  faithful  servants,  instead  of  being 
in  the  midst  of  spies  and  liars.  He  had  paid  his  ser- 
vants well  when  living  with  Madame  de  Rumford,  yet 
they  were  all  of  them  bribed  as  soon  as  they  came  into 
the  house.  He  adds  :  cc  Madame  de  Rumford  is  well. 
I  see  her  sometimes,  though  very  seldom.  After  what 
is  past,  a 'reconciliation  is  impossible.  She  now  repents 
of  her  conduct,  but  it  is  too  late.  The  less  I  see  her, 
the  better.  I  now  enjoy  peace  and  tranquillity,  and  my 
health  improves  every  day." 

The  daughter  very  considerately  writes  :  — 

tc  It  did  not  appear  that  his  lady  harbored  animosity  towards 
the  Count,  nor  even  that  he  did  towards  her.  His  first  im- 
pressions of  her  were  by  no  means  incorrect,  for  she  was  in 
every  respect  a  very  superior  person.  Certain  traits  in  their 
characters  made  it  impossible  that  they  should  live  together. 
Neither  was  willing  to  give  up  a  favorite  plan.  Small  disagree- 
ments, one  by  one,  led  on  to  a  great  one.  Advantages,  how- 
ever, remained  on  the  side  of  the  lady,  as  she  retained  the  house 
which  the  Count  had  taken  such  pains 'and  pleasure  to  make 


566  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

what  it  was,  very  delightful  as  he  considered  it.  He  had  looked 
forward  to  it  as  a  permanent  home,  to  be  shared  with  an  agree- 
able, rich,  and  accomplished  lady  as  a  companion.  His  disap- 
pointment was  certainly  great,  and  no  doubt  suggested  the 
melancholy  purpose,  which  for  a  certainty  he  cherished,  of 
secluding  himself  wholly  from  the  world.  All  his  later  letters 
to  me  tended  to  that  point.  He  invites  me  to  come  to  him  if  I 
can  consent  to  be  his  companion  in  perfect  solitude,  even 
obscurity.  Otherwise  I  was  not  to  come.  The  Count's  not 
having  been  provident  in  laying  up  a  part,  ever  so  little,  of  his 
different  pays  through  life,  left  him  dependent  on  courts  and 
kings." 

The  following  abstracts  from  others  of  the  Count's 
letters  will  have  an  interest  from  their  incidental  con- 
tents. It  will  be  seen  that  the  Count  occupies  his  new 
home.  He  received  occasional  visits  from  his  lady,  and 
this  is  consistent  with  an  authoritative  statement  already 
noted,  that  the  separation  between  them  was  an  cc  ami- 
cable" one. 

"AUTEUIL,  24th  October,  1809. 

"DEAR  SALLY, — The  Mentor  arrived  some  weeks  since, 
when  I  was  expecting  you.  Without  doubt  the  reason  you  did 
not  come  was  owing  to  your  not  finding  proper  protection,  and 
in  these  terrible  times  of  war  you  cannot  be  too  particular. 
This  unfortunate  war  chains  me  to  the  spot,  for  I  am  so  situ- 
ated between  three  governments  that  I  am  obliged  almost  to 
turn  into  a  cypher.  It  is  England  where  I  want  to  go,  but  dare 
not  risk  it.  And  it  is  there  I  should  much  prefer  receiving  you 
than  here. 

"  By  the  date  of  this  letter  you  will  perceive  it  to  be  the 
anniversary  of  my  wedding-day  with  Madame  Lavoisier,  to-day 
four  years.  I  own  I  make  choice  of  this  day  to  write  to  you, 
in  reality  to  testify  joy  ;  but  joy  that  I  am  away  from  her,  as 
has  been  the  case  for  the  last  six  months.  It  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  describe  what  I  suffered  there  for  the  last  year.  1  often  t 


Life  of  Count  Riimford.  567 

wished  you,  but  am  now  exceedingly  glad  you  did  not  come,  as 
it  would  have  made  you  unhappy  and  perhaps  done  me  no  good. 
I  was  made  quite  ill  at  last,  but  now,  thank  Heaven,  I  am 
recovering  my  health  and  spirits  fast.  I  am  like  one  risen  from 
the  dead.  Adieu,  my  dear  child.  You  will  hear  from  me 
soon  again,  and  I  -hope  to  see  you  soon.  I  have  some  pretty 
rooms  prepared  for  you.  1  had  one  of  the  Aichners  to  come 
and  wait  upon  you,  but  she  did  nbt  exactly  please  me,  and  I 
sent  her  back  again.  My  old  servants,  her  father  and  mother, 
are  nicely  established,  owing  to  mine  and  the  Elector's  kind- 
ness, at  Munich,  and  are  very  happy." 

"  AUTEUIL,    12th  Nov.,     1809. 

"  MY  DEAR  DAUGHTER,  —  Here  is  another  month  past,  and 
you  do  not  come.  I  know  all  the  difficulties  of  travelling 
either  by  sea  or  by  land,  so  do  not  blame  you  ;  am  only  sorry. 
Sorry  on  several  accounts,  —  on  one  account,  that  I  want  to  see 
you.  For  do  you  recollect,  my  dear,  that  it  is  many  years 
since  we  saw  each  other  ?  We  will  not  say  how  many,  lest 
the  time  should  seem  longer.  And  little  did  I  think,  when  you 
quitted  me  at  Brompton,  it  would  have  been  for  such  a  length 
of  time,  nor  would  it  have  been  but  for  this  unfortunate  mar- 
riage. Never  were  there  two  more  distinct  beings  than  this 
woman  (for  I  cannot  call  her  a  lady)  before  and  after  mar- 
riage. But  undoubtedly  she  was  pushed  on  by  those  looking 
forward  to  her  fortune,  fearing  some  of  it  would  light  on  me. 
She  is  the  most  avaricious  woman  I  ever  saw,  and  the  most 
cunning, — things  which  I  could  not  possibly  know  before 
marriage. 

"  I  suffered  more  for  the  last  fourteen  months,  indeed,  the 
whole  three  years  and  a  half  that  I  lived  with  her,  than  I  had 
an  idea  I  could  have  gone  through.  Luckily  I  have  money 
enough  of  my  own,  but  war  and  these  terrible  times  prevent  me 
from  receiving  money  from  Bavaria,  or  my  half-pay  from  Eng- 
land. Yet  I  am  obliged  to  keep  up  a  certain  consequence, 
besides  being  disgusted  with  everything.  I  am  afraid  you  will 
have  to  quit  the  world  if  you  stay  with  me." 


568  Life  of  Count  Ruinford. 

"  AUTEUIL,  I  o1;11  January,  1810. 

u  Here  month  after  month  arrives,  but  you  da  not  come.  I 
am  very  impatient  to  see  you,  but  I  am  more  anxious  lest  some- 
thing should  happen  to  you  on  the  way,  for  discord  reigns 
everywhere.  Americans,  while  at  peace  with  the  whole  world, 
have  their  vessels  taken  by  both  the  French  and  English,  by  their 
disliking  to  have  them  favor  one  or  the  other  of  the  nations  ; 
which  it  must  be  owned  the  Americans  are  fond  of  doing,  by 
being  the  carriers  to  both  nations,  —  of  great  advantage  to  them. 

"  I  flattered  myself  on  quitting  that  hornet's  nest  of  a  place, 
the  Rue  d'Anjou,  and  having  relinquished  all  my  rights  and 
titles  there,  avoiding  scrupulously  political  cabals,  frequenting 
neither  Ministers  nor  Courts,  leading  the  most  harmless  life, 
besides  having  been  of  an  advantage  to  mankind  thus  far,  I 
might  be  allowed  harmless  repose.  But  it  is  not  the  case.  In 
some  situations  a  person  cannot  be  allowed  to  escape  difficulty. 

"  That  is  precisely  my  case.  I  must  take  sides  with  one  or 
the  other,  and  because  I  do  not  I  experience  calumny  and 
persecution.  The  way  I  reason  is,  that,  having  done  a  pretty 
good  share  of  good,  I  think  I  am  entitled  to  safety  and  repose; 
while  those  still  involved  in  danger  and  difficulties  think  that  I, 
having  shared  honors  and  kindness,  ought  to  be  involved  in  the 
common  troubles. 

"  In  short,  I  have  no  other  resource  left  me  but  to  rush  into 
difficulty  and  danger,  or  to  quit  the. world.  Bound  as  I  am  to  a 
certain  power  [Bavaria],  I  can  do  nothing  by  halves.  The  quit- 
ting the  world  occupies  much  of  my  thoughts.  Will  you,  my 
dear,  quit  it  with  me,  if  you  come  ?  I  cannot  retire  publicly, 
and  cannot  stay." 

I  am  uncertain  as  to  the  date  of  the  following  letter, 
but  it  must  have  been  written  soon  after  the  preceding, 
and  was  probably  left  at  Auteuil  in  case  the  daughter 
should  arrive  during  her  father's  absence. 

"  MY  DEAR  CHILD,  —  From  Mr.  Armstrong,  our  Minister 
at  Paris,  I  gained  information  that  you  have  already  sailed  from 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  569 

America,  in  all  probability,  but  that  unfortunately  the  said  ship 
has  been  taken  and  carried  into  Plymouth.  My  first  impression 
was  to  be  much  alarmed,  but  he  assures  me  that  passengers,  in 
his  opinion,  have  nothing  to  fear,  if  not  detention,  extra  expence, 
and  a  little  trouble. 

"  I  am  absolutely  obliged  to  set  out  for  Munich,  so  if  you 
come  in  the  time  you  must  make  yourself  comfortable.  I  shall 
leave  people  enough  to  do  anything  you  may  wish,  and  my 
coachman,  whom  I  do  not  take  with  me,  is  to  go  often  to 
inquire  for  you  in  Paris  at  the  coming  in  of  the  diligences. 
Besides  which,  should  you  arrive,  you  will  take  the  carriage 
conveying  you  and  your  baggage  to  my,  which  will  then  be 
your,  home.  So  if  I  find  you  here  on  my  return,  it  will  give 
me  much  pleasure. 

"  The  King  had  been  in  Paris  and  invited  me  so  kindly  I 
thought  it  my  duty  to  go,  but  he  assures  me  I  shall  not  be 
detained  there  on  any  business  of  importance.  I  go  with  a 
heavy  heart  on  account  of  the  poor  Countess.  She  is  surely 
not  living  at  this  moment.  I  have  the  melancholy  tidings  from 
a  friend  of  mine  at  Vienna,  where  she  has  been  some  months 
past  with  her  daughter,  married  to  Count  d'Apponi,  a  Hun- 
garian." 

I  introduce  the  two  following  letters,  addressed  to  his 
daughter  by  the  Count  from  Munich,  in  some  per- 
plexity as  to  the  date  which  she  assigns  to  them.  In  her 
comments  she  implies  that  she  arrived  at  Auteuil  dur- 
ing his  absence  on  this  visit  at  Munich,  which  was  not 
the  case. 

"  I  arrived  here  [Munich]  after  a  pleasant,  prosperous  jour- 
ney of  eight  days.  I  had  foreseen  this  journ'ey  a  long  time,  and 
delayed  setting  out  in  hopes  you  would  come.  Had  that  been 
the  case,  I  think  I  should  have  taken  you  with  me,  for  you  have 
many  friends  here  who  all  desire  to  be  kindly  remembered  to 
you.  Still  it  would  have  struck  you  very  dull,  as  it  did  me,  not 
to  find  our  good  friend,  the  Countess.  Poor  Sophy,  now 


570  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Madame  de  Miltez,  has  been  very  sick,  indeed  is  still.  Theresa 
Nogarola,  now  Countess  d'Apponi,  will  follow  her  husband,  I 
think,  in  the  end,  to  Paris,  who  has  expectations  of  going  there 
as  Minister. 

"  My  reception  here  has  been  most  kind  and  flattering.  The 
whole  town  is  in  expectation  of  seeing  me  again  fixed  here  and 
employed  in  the  public  affairs  of  the  country.  But  I  know 
positively,  and  it  is  my  greatest  consolation,  that  I  shall  be  per- 
mitted to  return  quietly  to  my  retreat  at  Auteuil. 

"Adieu,  my  dear  Sally.  I  shall  write  to  you  again,  I  think, 
before  leaving  Munich,  but  you  had  better  not  write  me,  lest 
I  should  be  already  set  out  on  my  return.  You  must  tell 
the  coachman  to  take  you  about,  and  go  and  call  on  your 
countryman,  Mr.  Parker,  and  Madame  Preble.  If  you  want 
money,  apply  to  Messrs.  Delesserts  ;  and  let  the  Baron  know 
of  your  arrival  at  Auteuil,  as  likewise  the  Marquis  of  Chan- 
sener,  —  they  are  both  particular  friends  of  mine.  Give  no 
intelligence  of  your  arrival  to  a  certain  person.  I  do  not 
wish  it. 

"  Farewell,  my  dear  child,  &c.,  &c." 

"MUNICH,  25*  Sept.,  1810 

"  MY  DEAR  SALLY,  —  I  am  still  detained,  and  fear  I  shall 
be  for  a  month  to  come,  for  the  King  has  an  Academy  of 
Arts  and  Sciences  forming,  and  wishes  my  assistance,  and  he 
has  ever  been  so  kind  to  me  in  promoting  my  happiness  and 
prosperity  I  cannot  do  too  much  to  serve  him,  if  enough. 

"  I  had  one  of  the  King  of  Bavaria's  letters  before  leaving 
Paris,  and  another  from  the  Prince  Royal  of  Bavaria,  who  is 
just  married  to  a  Princess  of  Sax-Hilsburghausen,  and  who  will 
keep  his  Court  at  Saltzbourg,  where  I  intend  to  pay  him  a  visit, 
and  where  I  am  sure  of  finding  a  kind  reception.  His  Royal 
Highness  wrote  me  a  most  gracious  letter  of  four  pages,  which 
he  finished  by  subscribing  himself  '  Votre  devoue  Louis,  Prince 
Royale.'  The  subject  and  every  expression  of  his  letter  mani- 
fested his  esteem  and  regard  for  me.  He  is  a  very  promising 
Prince,  and  will,  I  am  persuaded,  be  a  good  King.  All  his 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  571 

actions  discover  an  ardent  zeal  for  the  prosperity  of  the  nation 
he  is  born  to  govern.  His  Father  loves  him  very  much,  en- 
courages ,me  to  give  full  answers  to  all  his  questions,  and  you 
may  suppose  I  did  so  when  I  tell  you  that  in  a  letter  in  reply  to 
his  there  were  thirty-three  pages  of  close  writing.  It  is  flatter- 
ing to  me  to  have  acquired  the  confidence  of  the  Princes  of 
Bavaria  to  the  third  generation. 

"  By  what  a  strange  series  of  events  have  I  been  torn  by 
Providence  from  a  situation  in  which  I  most  unfortunately  fixed 
myself,  as  I  thought,  for  life  !  " 

"  MUNICH,  244.h  October,  1810. 

"Mr  DEAR  SALLY,  —  You  will  perceive  that  this  is  the 
anniversary  of  my  marriage.  I  am  happy  to  call  it  to  mind, 
that  I  may  compare  my  present  situation  with  the  three  and  a 
half  horrible  years  I  was  living  with  that  tyrannical,  avaricious, 
unfeeling  woman.  You  can  have  no  idea,  my  dear  Sally,  what 
I  had  to  suffer  during  the  last  fourteen  months,  indeed  during 
the  whole  three  years  and  a  half  I  lived  in  that  house  ;  but  the 
closing  six  months  was  a  purgatory  sufficiently  painful  to  do 
away  the  sins  of  a  thousand  years. 

"The  Prince  Royal  was  married  on  the  12th,  and  we  have 
had  continued  fetes  and  rejoicings.  The  English  Garden  is  in 
high  beauty  ;  no  expence  is  spared  upon  it.  I  am  allowed  to 
dine  with  the  King  pretty  much  as  often  as  I  wish,  but  to- 
morrow I  take  leave  of  him,  of  Munich,  and  the  rest  of  my 
friends  ;  so  you  will  soon,  my  dear  Sally,  see  me  at  Auteuil. 
My  plan  was  to  have  made  quite  a  detour,  in  search  of  a  fine 
climate.  I  meant  to  go  from  hence  to  Milan  through  the  Tyrol, 
and  after  paying  my  respects  there  to  the  Vice-Qj.ieen,  the  King 
of  Bavaria's  daughter,  to  go  to  Turin,  and  from  thence  across 
the  mountains  directly  to  Nice.  From  thence  by  Toulon, 
Marseilles,  Montpelier,  Avignon,  and  Lyons.  I  will  take  you 
some  time,  perhaps,  by  that  route. 

"  But  adieu,  my  dear  Sally,  I  shall  soon  be  with  you. 

"  RUMFORD." 


572  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Miss  Sarah  notes  that  this  was  the  only  one  of  all  her 
father's  letters  to  her  which  he  signed  otherwise  than  by 
a  simple  IC  R." 

The  following  extract  is  from  another  letter  written 
by  the  Count,  at  Munich,  to  his  daughter. 

"  Everybody  here  of  your  old  acquaintance  enquires  after 
you.  The  three  aides-de-camp  I  had  when  you  were  with  me, 
Taxis,  Spreti,  and  Verger,  have  all  been  killed  in  the  late  wars. 
The  Bavarian  troops,  who  have  distinguished  themselves  by 
their  bravery  on  all  occasions,  have  suffered  greatly.  Munich 
grows  larger  every  day.  The  English  Garden  is  in  the  highest 
beauty. 

"  My  health  is  perfectly  good,  and  I  am  very  happy.  All 
my  late  sufferings. are  forgotten.  I  feel  as  if  just  relieved  from 
an  insupportable  weight.  God  be  thanked  for  my  delivery ! 
All  your  friends  here  have  desired  to  be  remembered  to  you. 
Adieu,  my  dear  Sally,  make  yourself  as  comfortable  and  happy 
as  you  can,  and  be  assured  that  I  have  at  length  quite  recovered 
my  reason,  and  that  I  am  now  persuaded  that  all  that  has  hap- 
pened to  me  has  been  most  fortunate  for  me.  I  am  now  a  free 
man." 

The  Countess  says  that  the  above  letters  from  Mu- 
nich, written  while  her  father  was  expecting  her  arrival 
in  Europe,  were  the  most  cheerful  and  healthful  ones 
which  she  had  received  from  him  since  his  disappoint- 
ment at  not  being  accepted  as  the  Bavarian  Ambassador. 

I  defer  to  another  chapter  an  account  of  the  daugh- 
ter's eventful  experiences  in  her  efforts  to  rejoin  her 
father.  The  lady  concerning  whom  so  many  severe  and 
reproachful  epithets  have  been  used  in  the  preceding 
pages  is  entitled  now  to  a  more  considerate  notice. 

For  the  sake  of  following  without  interruption  the 
order  of  the  letters  of  Sir  Charles  Blagden  and  of  Count 
Rumford,  no  comments  or  information  drawn  from 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  573 

other  sources  have  been  introduced, .  for  the  purpose 
of  presenting  a  more  complete  narrative  of  the  circum- 
stances perhaps  all  too  minutely  reported  in  them.  To 
whatever  degree  the  reader  of  the  above  letters  and 
extracts  may  have  given  his  sympathy  and  commisera- 
tion to  the  Count,  it  is  impossible  to  suppress  the  con- 
fession that  these  relations  sadly  detract  from  the  dig- 
nity with  which  we  should  always  be  glad  to  invest  the 
life  of  a  philosopher  and  a  philanthropist.  The  narra- 
tive, painful  and  humiliating  as  it  is  in  .some  of  its 
details,  is  not,  however,  without  precedents  in  the  experi- 
ence alike  of  sages  and  of  saints.  It  would  be  hardly 
worth  the  while  for  us  to  make  these  painful  incidents 
in  the  life  of  Count  Rumford  the  subject  of  any  critical 
or  judicial  examination.  The  narrative  is  in  the  main 
self-explanatory.  He  evidently  was  not  in  a  healthful 
state  of  mind  or  of  body  when  he  formed  the  intimate 
acquaintance  of  Madame  Lavoisier,  and  then  committed 
himself  and  all  his  peculiar  views  and  ways  of  life  to 
the  risks  of  a  matrimonial  connection  with  her.  Allow- 
ing all  that  is  said  in  praise  of  Madame  Lavoisier,  — 
and  I  have  yet  more  fully  to  repeat  the  lofty  and  hearty 
commendations  of  two  of  her  most  near  friends,  them- 
selves highly  distinguished  and  esteemed,  —  we  may  find 
a  hint  not  without  significance  for  us  in  the  epithet  which 
Sir  Charles  Blagden  used,  instead  of  a  name,  in  his  let- 
ters to  the  Countess.  It  was  a  cc French  lady"  to  whom 
this  practical  and  not  at  all  enthusiastic  or  sentimental 
English  philosopher  "sacrificed  his  former  indepen- 
dence/' She  was  a  lady  of  the  salon,  —  the  brilliant 
centre,  admiration,  and  idol  of  a  large  circle  of  savans 
and  men  of  wit,  and  as  such  she  has  found  a  competent 
biographer. 


574  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

That  venerable  French  statesman  and  man  of  letters, 
Monsieur  Guizot,  was  one  of.the  warmest  and  most 
intimate  friends  of  Madarne  de  Rumford,  and  clung 
to  her  society  in  the  last  years  of  her  protracted  life 
as  to  one  of  his  fondest  ties  to  a  long-vanished  past. 
The  beautiful  and  affectionate  tribute  which  he  has 
paid  to  her  will  doubtless  afford  a  grateful  relief  to  the 
reader.* 

M.  Guizot  writes  :  "  When  I  search  among  my 
reminiscences  of  the  year  1831,  I  find  there  only  three 
persons  around  whom  society  still  gathered  with  no 
other  object  but  that  of  enjoyment.  Imperturbable  in 
her  habits  of  life  as  in  her  sentiments,  through  these 
revolutionary  times,  Madame  de  Rumford  always  assem- 
bled in  her  saloon-  Frenchmen  and  foreigners,  savansy 
men  of 'letters  and  men  of  the  world,  and  always  assured 
for  them  alike  around  her  table  the  interest  of  excellent 
conversation,  as  in  her  more  numerous  reunions  the 
delight  of  the  choicest  music." 

The  other  two  distinguished  ladies  whom  Guizot 
mentions  were  the  Countess  de  Boigne,  daughter  of  the 
Marquis  d'Osmond,  and  the  mistress  of  his  hospi- 
talities, and  Madame  Recamier.  He  adds  :  cc  Of  these 
three  persons,  justly  esteemed  and  courted,  Madame  de 
Rumford  was,  in  1831,  the  only  one  whom  I  con- 
stantly visited."  In  a  note  he  says,  "  Five  years  after 
her  death,  by  the  desire  of  her  family,  I  gathered  my 
remembrances  of  this  lady,  her  life  and  her  saloon,  in 
a  little  memoir,  some  extracts  from  which  were  in- 

*  It  is  found  in  "  Me"moires  pour  servir  a  1'Histoire  de  mon  Temps.  Par  M. 
Guizot.  Tome  deuxieme.  Paris,  1859."  My  references  are  to  pp.  241  and  2,42,  in 
the  body  of  the  volume,  and  more  particularly  to  No.  VII.,  Pieces  Historiques,  — 
"  Notice  sur  Madame  de  Rumford.  Ecritee  en  1841,"  in  the  Appendix  to  the 
volume. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  575 


serted  in  the  Biographie  Universelle*  of  Messrs.  Mi- 
chaud,  but  which  had  been  printed  only  for  her  friends, 
and  was  known  in  its  completeness  only  to  them." 

This  charming  memoir  the  author  reproduces  as  one 
of  the  "  historical  pieces"  in  his  Appendix.  It  pre- 
sents the  house  in  the  Rue  d'Anjou,  which  Count  Rum- 
ford  had  done  so  much  to  beautify,  and  the  lady,  with 
whom  he  was  so  unfortunately  at  variance,  under  very 
different  aspects  than  those  which  they  have  had  for 
us  in  the  preceding  pages.  Writing  in  1841,  Guizot 
says :  — 

"  It  is  now  five  years  since  in  a  beautiful  and  delightful  house, 
which  no  longer  exists,  situated  in  the  midst  of  a  lovely  garden, 
now  coursed  by  a  street,  was  gathered  twice  or  thrice  a  week  a 
choice  and  varied  company,  —  men  of  the  world  and  of  letters, 
savans,  Frenchmen  and  foreigners,  men  of  the  past  time  and 
of  the  present,  old  and  young,  men  of  the  government  and  of 
the  opposition.  Many  of  those  who  met  there  met  nowhere 
else  ;  and  others  of  them,  if  they  did  meet  elsewhere,  probably 
met  in  coldness,  or  scarcely  tolerated  each  other.  But  there 
they  treated  each  other  with  extreme  politeness,  and  almost 
with  cordiality.  It  was  not  that  any  one  was  attracted  there  by 
any  private  interest,  or  for  an  object  which  compelled  him  to 
disguise  his  own  sentiments  ;  it  was  not  a  house  for  political  or 
literary  patronage,  where  one  might  push  his  fortunes  or  secure 
success.  The  attraction  of  good  company,  the  pleasures  of  the 
intellect  and  of  conversation,  the  desire  to  share  in  the  daily 
incidents  of  social  life,  which  make  the  amusement  of  the  polite 
world  and  the  relaxation  of  the  toiling  world,  were  the  sole 
motives  and  the  charms  which  collected  at  Madame  de  Rum- 
ford's  such  an  eager  circle,  and  in  it  so  ^nany  men  of  such 
varied  distinctions. 

"  Fontenelle,  Montesquieu,  Voltaire,  Turgot,  D'Alembert, 
if  they  could  revisit  us,  would  be  surprised  at  seeing  that  we 

*   In  the  Supplement  to  that  work,  Vol.  LXXX.,  1847. 


576  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

regarded  such  a  house  and  its  usages  as  something  rare  or 
strange.  It  was  conformed  to  the  spirit,  the  habitual  tone,  of 
life  in  their  time,  —  a  time  of  a  noble  and  liberal  sociability 
which  was  engaged  in  stirring  great  questions  and  great  interests, 
extracting  from  them  only  their  agreeable  elements,  the  move- 
ment of  thought  and  hope,  leaving  to  their  inheritors  the  strug- 
gle of  practical  trial  and  experiment." 

M.  Guizot  then  indulges  in  a  long  digression,  writ- 
ten in  a  mingled  spirit  of  regret  and  hopefulness,  as 
he  recalls  the  generation  that  passed  from  the  stage  at 
the  era  of  the  Revolution,  and  as  he  tries  to  bridge  the 
abyss  between  that  fearful  epoch  and  our  own.  He  calls 
back  the  glory  of  that  olden  time,  —  the  brilliant  social 
circles  devoted  to  the  pleasures  of  the  intellect ;  the  har- 
monious fellowships  of  men  of  various  accomplishments 
and  activities,  —  the  nobles,  the  clergy,  the  lawyers, 
men  of  affairs  and  of  letters,  and  the  highly  cultivated 
women,  who  mingled  on  equal  terms  in  all  the  coteries ; 
and  then  he  reproduces  the  attractions  and  engage- 
ments of  the  saloons  of  those  days,  with  the  selecter 
groups  which  composed  them.  His  brilliant,  but  pen- 
sive, historical  and  philosophical  review  of  the  revo- 
lutionary and  transition  epoch,  is  preliminary  to  his 
fond  memorial  of  the  lady  whom  he  describes  as 
educated  under  the  most  delightful  influences  of  the 
society  of  which  she  was  among  the  very  last  sur- 
vivors. 

Marie  Anne  Pierrete  Paulze  was  born  at  Montbri- 
son,  January  20,^1758,  and  died  as  Madame  de  Rum- 
ford,  in  Paris,  February  10,  1836;  having  outlived  her 
last  husband  nearly  twenty-two  years.  She  was  the 
daughter  of  M.  Paulze,  receiver  and  farmer  general  of 
the  revenues,  and  a  niece  of  the  Abbe  Terrai,  comptrol- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  577 

ler-general.  From  her  earliest  years  she  enjoyed  at  her 
father's  house  the  society  of  eminent  and  cultivated 
men  who  were  devoted  to  the  highest  studies  and  to 
reformatory  enterprises.  There  she  listened  to  Turgot, 
Malesherbes,  Trudaine,  Condorcet,  Dupont  de  Ne- 
mours, and  the  Abbe  Raynal.  Her  uncle,  the  Abbe 
Terrai,  wished  her  to  form  a  marriage  at  court;  but 
her  father,  a  man  of  high  distinction  in  science  and 
affairs  of  state,  and  possessed  of  great  wealth,  preferred 
one  of  his  own  colleagues  in  the  revenue  service,  Mon- 
sieur Lavoisier.  To  him  she  was  married  on  Decem- 
ber 1 6,  1771,  being  then  not  quite  fourteen  years  of 
age.  Having  appreciated  and  improved  upon  the  bril- 
liant advantages  which  she  had  enjoyed  at  her  father's 
house  in  the  society  of  wits  and  savans,  and  receiving  a 
large  fortune,  she  took  to  her  new  home  for  her  hus- 
band, with  youth,  beauty,  and  all  accomplishments,  a 
passionate  interest  in  his  own  studies  and  scientific  pur- 
suits. She  became  his  companion,  pupil,  and  assistant, 
living  in  his  laboratory,  aiding  in  his  experiments,  writ- 
ing at  his  dictation,  and  translating  and  drawing  for 
him.  She  made  with  her  own  hand  the  beautiful  illus- 
trations of  his  Treatise  on  Chemistry,  and  translated, 
at  his  request,  Kirwan's  work  on  Phlogiston  and  the 
Constitution  of  Acids.  (Paris,  1787.) 

Though  her  husband's  principles  were  in  favor  of 
reform,  he  had  at  the  very  outbreak  of  the  Revolution 
contemplated  the  future  with  dismay,  and  had  refused 
the  invitation  of  the  Kino;  to  become  one  of  his  minis- 

o 

ters.  The  class  to  which  he  and  his  father-in-law  be- 
longed, as  speculators  in  the  revenues,  constituted  the 
most  conspicuous  and  odious  of  the  victims  of  the  san- 
guinary passions  which  were  about  to  have  their  riot. 

37 


578  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Robespierre  made  short  shrift  with  those  who  were  pro- 
nounced guilty  of  having  drawn  large  profits  from  the 
old  government.  Madame  Lavoisier's  husband  and 
father,  with  one  hundred  and  twenty-two  others  of  the 
condemned  before  the  revolutionary  tribunal,  perished 
under  the  guillotine,  on  'the  same  scaffold,  May  8, 
1794.  The  charge  against  Lavoisier  was  that  he  had 
adulterated  tobacco,  one  of  the  articles  the  revenue  of 
which  he  farmed,  with  water  and  harmful  ingredients. 
After  being  sentenced,  he  asked  for  a  few  days'  respite, 
that  he  might  be  informed  of  the  results  of  some  of  the 
experiments  which  he  had  instituted,  and  which  were  in 
progress  during  his  confinement.  Coffinhal,  the  coarse 
jester  of  the  tribunal, -cried  out,  "  The  republic  has  no 
need  of  philosophers." 

These  direful  times  and  events  dashed  all  the  happy 
circumstances  of  the  life  and  home  of  Madame  Lavoi- 
sier. She  herself  narrowly  escaped  violence  by  hiding 
in  obscurity.  Her  husband  had  devised  to  her  all  his 
fortune,  as  she  was  childless,  and  it  was  saved  from 
wreck  by  the  fidelity  of  a  servant  who  managed  to 
secure  it  by  a  letter  of  credit  on  London,  through  M. 
de  Marbois.  Under  the  Directory  she  resumed  her 
place  in  society,  and  when  order  and  tranquillity  suc- 
ceeded to  the  horrors  of  the  proscription  she  drew 
around  her,  besides  the  surviving  friends  of  her  hus- 
band and  father,  another  circle  of  the  disciples  and  suc- 
cessors of  the  old  philosophers,  including  Lagrange, 
Laplace,  Berthollet,  Cuvier,  Prony,  Humboldt,  and 
Arago.  Her  attractive  home  at  the  Arsenal  was  a 
place  where  all  distinguished  persons  were  entertained 
with  grace  and  amenity.  She  collected,  edited,  and 
published,  with  an  Introduction  every  way  appropriate, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  579 

the  scientific  works   of  her  eminent  husband.     (Paris, 

1805.) 

I  translate  again  the  words  of  Guizot. 

cc  Among  the  guests  of  this  home,  the  sharers  in  its  ele- 
gant hospitality,  came  M.  de  Rumford.  He  was  then  in  the 
service  of  the  King  of  Bavaria,  and  enjoyed  in  public  a  splendid 
scientific  popularity.  His  spirit  was  lofty,  his  conversation  was 
full  of  interest,  and  his  manners  were  marked  by  gentle  kind- 
ness. He  made  himself  agreeable  to  Madame  Lavoisier.  He 
accorded  with  her  habits,  her  tastes,  one  might  almost  say 
with  her  reminiscences.  She  hoped  to  renew,  to  a  degree, 
her  state  of  happiness.  She  was  married  to  him  on  the  22d  [a 
discrepancy  of  date]  of  October,  1805,  happy  to  offer  to  a 
distinguished  man  a  great  fortune  and  the  most  agreeable 
existence. 

"  Their  characters  and  temperaments  were  incompatible. 
Youth  alone  finds  it  easy  to  forget  the  loss  of  independence  in 
the  bosom  of  a  tender  affection.  Delicate  questions  started  up 
between  them.  Their  keen  sensibilities  were  tried.  Madame 
de  Rumford,  on  her  remarriage,  had  formally  stipulated,  in  the 
contract  which  she  had  made,  that  she  should  be  called  Madame 
Lavoisier  de  Rumford.  M.  de  Rumford,  who  had  consented 
to  this,  found  it  to  be  disagreeable  to  him.  She  persisted,  as 
she  wrote  in  1808  :  '  I  have  regarded  it  as  an  obligation,  as  a 
point  of  religion,  not  to  drop  the  name  of  Lavoisier.  Trusting 
the  pledge  of  M.  de  Rumford,  I  should  have  been  satisfied  with 
that,  and  should  not  have  made  it  one  of  the  articles  of  my 
civil  contract  with  him,  had  I  not  wished  to  put  on  record  a 
token  of  my  respect  for  M.  Lavoisier,  and  a  proof  of  the  gen- 
erosity of  M.  de  Rumford.  It  is  my  duty  to  hold  to  a  deter- 
mination which  has  always  been  one  of  the  conditions  of  our 
union  ;  and  I  have  at  the  bottom  of  my  heart  a  profound  con- 
viction that  M.  de  Rumford  will  not  disapprove  of  me  for  it, 
and  that  on  taking  time  for  reflection  he  will  permit  me  to  con- 
tinue to  fulfil  a  duty  which  I  regard  as  sacred.' 

"  This  hope,  however,  was  deceptive.     After  some  domestic 


580  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

agitations,  which  M.  de  Rumford  with  more  of  tact  might  have 
kept  from  becoming  so  notorious,  a  separation  became  neces- 
sary, and  it  took  place,  amicably,  on  the  joth  of  June,  1809. 

"From  that  date,  and  during  twenty-seven  years,  no  event, 
we  might  even  say  no  incident,  disturbed  Madame  de  Rumford 
in  her  noble  and  agreeable  way  of  living.  She  gave  herself  up 
equally  to  her  friends  and  to  society  in  its  limited  or  restricted 
circle,  which  she  received  at  her  home  with  a  strange  mixture 
of  rudeness  and  politeness,  always  showing  most  companionable 
qualities  and  full  knowledge  of  the  world,  notwithstanding  her 
roughness  of  speech  and  her  caprices  of  assumption.  Every 
Monday  she  gave  a  dinner  to  rarely  more  than  ten  or  twelve 
persons,  and  that  was  the  occasion  on  which  distinguished  men, 
Frenchmen  or  foreigners,  habitues  of  the  dwelling  or  casually 
invited  guests,  gathered  around  her  and  at  once  established  an 
extemporized  intimacy  with  each  other  between  intellects  so 
cultivated,  by  the  delights  of  a  conversation  either  serious  or 
piquant,  always  comprehensive  and  refined,  which  Madame  de 
Rumford  herself  enjoyed  more  than  she  participated  in.  On 
Tuesdays  she  received  all  who  might  visit  her.  For  Fridays 
there  were  large  assemblies,  composed  of  very  different  persons, 
but  all  belonging  to  the  best  society  of  their  class,  and  all 
pleasantly  drawn  by  the  attractions  of  the  excellent  music  which 
the  most  celebrated  artists  and  the  most  accomplished  amateurs 
combined  to  furnish. 

"  Under  the  Empire,  added  to  its  general  attractiveness, 
Madame  de  Rumford's  house  had  a  special  charm.  Thought 
and  speech  had  there  no  official  character.  A  certain  freedom 
of  mind  and  tongue  ruled  in  it,  without  personal  antagonism 
or  political  biases,  emphatically  a  freedom  of  mind,  a  license 
of  thought  and  speech,  without  any  distrust  or  disquiet  as  to 
what  authority  might  judge  or  say,  —  a  precious  privilege  then, 
more  precious  than  any  one  to-day  imagines.  After  one  has 
breathed  under  an  air-pump  he  can  appreciate  the  charms  of 
free  respiration." 

M.    Guizot  goes  on   to  relate   how,   after    the    Res- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  581 

toration,  amid  the  raging  animosities  and  the  imbit- 
tering  alienations  of  party  spirit,  Madame  de  Rum- 
ford's  dwelling,  if  it  could  not  wholly  exclude  this 
social  bane,  admitted  but  very  little  of  it. 

u  As  formerly  the  spirit  of  freedom,  so  now  of  equity,  was  not 
allowed  to  be  banished  from  it.  Not  only  did  men  of  the  most 
different  parties  continue  to  meet  there,  but  perfect  urbanity 
reigned  among  them.  It  seemed  as  if  by  a  tacit  understanding 
they  parted  with  their  differences,  antipathies,  and  rancors  at 
the  door  of  the  saloon,  and  agreed  to  abstain  from  those  subjects 
of  conversation  which  had  gathered  animosities  about  them, 
and,  instead,  yielded  to  the  promptings  of  a  spirit  as  free  and  of 
a  heart  as  tolerant  as  if  they  had  never  been  drawn  under  the 
yoke  of  parties.  Thus  was  continued  in  the  home  of  Madame 
de  Rumford,  and  through  her  sway,  the  social  spirit  of  her  time 
and  of  the  circle  in  which  she  had  been  trained.  I  do  not 
know  whether  our  posterity  will  ever  see  such  a  grouped  so- 
ciety, with  manners  so  noble  and  gracious,  such  activity  in  the 
ideas  and  the  intercourse  of  life,  a  spirit  so  ardently  engaged 
in  the  progress  of  civilization  and  in  the  exercise  of  intel- 
ligence, without  any  of  those  bitter  passions,  those  inelegant 
and  rough  manners,  which  often  accompany,  and  make  unen- 
durable or  impossible,  the  most  desirable  relations This 

is  the  rare  and  charming  reality  which  I  have  witnessed  as  con- 
tinuing and  then  passing  away  in  the  latest  of  the  saloons 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  That  of  Madame  de  Rumford 
was  the  last  of  them  all.  It  closed  in  perfect  consistency 
with  itself,  without  the  entrance  of  any  derangement,  with- 
out passing  through  any  change  unlike  the  tenor  of  its  course. 
Madame  de  Rumford  had  passed  her  life  in  the  world,  in  seek- 
ing for  herself  and  in  offering  to  others  the  pleasures  of  society. 
Not  that  the  world  wholly  absorbed  her,  or  that  she  had  not, 
on  fit  occasions,  more  substantial  and  serious  counsels  to  give 
to  her  friends,  and  an  abounding  and  continued  benevolence 
scattered  without  ostentation  among  the  unfortunate.  But,  in 
truth,  the  world,  society,  made  for  her  existence.  She  lived 


582  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

wholly  in  her  drawing-room.  Indeed,  she  almost  died  there  on 
the  loth  of  February,  1836,  having  been  surrounded  on  the 
evening  before  by  those  whom  she  delighted  to  draw  around 
her,  and  who  will  never  forget  the  charms  of  her  dwelling  nor 
the  constancy  of  her  friendships." 

This  affectionate  and  appreciative  tribute  of  M. 
Guizot  must  be  the  compensation  for  any  aspersions 
or  rude  epithets  which  the  papers  that  have  been  quoted 
in  these  pages  have  cast  upon  the  fair  repute  of  the 
lady  who  so  engaged  his  admiration  as  the  represen- 
tative of  an  age,  a  tone  of  manners,  and  a  form  of 
social  delights,  which  were  for  him  the  glory  of  his 
own  prime  and  of  his  past.  One  can  hardly,  however, 
fail  of  reflecting  that  some  of  the  qualities  and  habits 
which  the  memorialist  himself  commended  in  Madame 
de  Rumford  would  have  no  such  charms  for  her  hus- 
band. Brusque  and  rough  manners  in  hersdf,  or  in 
any  class  of  her  guests,  would  offer  more  offence  to  his 
refined  sensibility  than  vivacity  of  spirit  or  compass  of 
varied  knowledge  would  impart  of  social  pleasure. 

It  is  observable  that  in  no  other  references  to  the 
alienations  between  Count  Rumford  and  his  wife  do  we 
find  mention  of  that  matter  of  variance  which  Guizot 
makes  so  prominent.  The  Count,  it  seems,  had  agreed, 
and  had  allowed  the  agreement  to  form  part  of  a  formal 
legal  contract,  that  his  wife  should  continue  to  bear  the 
name  of  Lavoisier  as  a  part  of  her  title.  Whatever 
may  be  thought  of  the  taste  or  the  propriety  of  the 
lady's  thus  constituting  herself  a  monument  of  her 
former  husband,  it  was  unpardonable  in  Count  Rum- 
ford  that  he  should  require  of  her  the  annulling  of,  or 
even  the. keeping  in  abeyance,  that  condition  of  their 
union.  It  was  one  which,  having  exacted,  the  lady 


Life  of  Coiint  Rimiford.  583 

would  be  likely  to  insist  upon  with  a  spirit  measured  in 
its  resoluteness  by  the  manifestation,  on  the  part  of  the 
Count,  of  an  increasing  disgust  or  opposition.  In  this 
case,  as  generally  under  similar  experiences,  the  inter- 
ference of  others —  alike  interested  and  indifferent  par- 
ties—  tended  to  widen  the  breach  and  to  foment  strifes 
between  wife  and  husband.  There  were  relatives  of 
Madame  de  Rumford  who  were  concerned  as  to  the 
reversion  of  her  large  fortune.  Some  of  the  savans 
whom  she  entertained  did  not  secure,  and  some  were 
not  worthy  of,  the  regard  of  the  Count.  The  very  rou- 
tine of  social  salooning,  such  as  is  described  by  Guizot, 
of  these  miscellaneous  groupings  of  men  and  women, 
—  many  of  them,  of  course,  excessively  disagreeable,  — 
was  odious  to  Rumford.  The  wonder  is  that  like  a 
philosopher,  balancing  privileges  against  annoyances,  he 
did  not  avail  himself  of  the  ample  size  of  the  house 
in  the  Rue  d'Anjou,  and,  as  he  might  have  done  with- 
out any  eccentric  variance  with  French  manners,  keep 
by  himself  when  he  was  not  attracted  by  his  wife's 
guests,  and  even  seek  her  company  only  a  part  of  the 
time. 

I  have  met  with  another  literary  reminiscence  of 
Madame  de  Rumford,  similar  in  its  tone  and  tenor  to 
M.  Guizot' s  tribute. 

The  Countess  de  Bassanville  was  herself  one  of  the 
circle  composing  the  society  which  Guizot  has  so  fondly 
described.  She  has  also  given  to  the  world  her  remi- 
niscences, in  a  strain  similar  to  his.  Her  recollections 
and  her  intimacies  cover  several  of  those  places  and 
scenes  which  she  groups  in  the  title  of  four  small  vol- 
umes, in  French,  bearing  the  title  of  "  The  Saloons  of 
the  Olden  Time."  Among  these  the  saloon  of  the 


584  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Countess  of  Rumford  has  a  conspicuous  position,  and 
is  described  with  much  vivacity  and  piquancy.* 

The  Countess  de  Bassanville  says  that  Madame  de 
Rumford 

"  Had  the  happiness  of  gathering  around  her  men  of  all  ranks 
and  of  ail  kinds.  The  Count,  her  husband,  a  philanthropic 
gentleman,  was  devoted  to  the  culture  of  the  sciences.  He  had 
been  natural  philosopher,  soldier,  and  ambassador,  had  traversed 
the  world  for  pleasure  and  enterprise,  and  thus  knew  a  multi- 
tude of  things  and  a  multitude  of  people.  His  conversation 
was  largely  made  up  of  his  own  experiences.  His  lady  said  he 
'  was  a  veritable  sample-card.'  But  she  uttered  this  in  an 
undertone,  for  the  Count,  who  had  fought  for  the  indepen- 
dence of  America  (!),  had  brought  home  with  him  the  most 
absolute  despotism.  This  theoretical  liberal  was  in  practice  a 
domestic  tyrant.  It  happened  that  she  was  gracious  to  all,  and 
so  to  one  living  with  her  this  cost  little  ;  for  she  was  the  most 
amiable  woman  in  the  world." 

The  Count  had  once  entertained  the  same  opinion  of 
his  lady. 

The  authoress  says  that  among  the  habitues  of  Madame 
de  Rumford's  saloon  was  a  certain  Colonel  Leroy,  who 
had  been  in  the  American  war  under  Lafayette,  "and 
who  was  admitted  solely  on  the  ground  of  the  happy 
misfortune  of  being  a  widower.  When  the  champagne 
reached  his  head,  he  told  great  stories,  though  he  was 
held  a  little  in  check  by  Count  Rumford's  particular 
and  tenacious  memory.  After  the  Count's  death  the 
Colonel  had  free  scope  alike  for  what  he  remembered 
and  what  he  invented." 

*  Les  Salons  d'Autrefois.  Souvenirs  Intimes.  Par  Madame  la  Comtesse  de 
Bassanville.  Preface  de  M.  Louis  Enault.  Troisieme  Edition.  Paris,  1869.  Some 
of  the  other  saloons  described  in  this  gossipy  book  are  those  of  Madame  la  Princesse 
de  Vaudement}  Isabeyj  M.  de  Bourrienne;  Madame  Campan ;  Casimir  Delavigne,  &c. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  585 

These  few  but  strong  strokes  make  real  to  us  some 
of  the  scenes  amid  which  Count  Rumford  found  any- 
thing but  pleasure  and  comfort  while  he  was  occupying 
a  home  with  his  wife.  If  Madame  de  Bassanville  had 
portrayed  a  few  more  of  the  guests  as  she  has  Colonel 
Leroy,  perhaps  our  sympathy  with  Count  Rumford 
might  be  strengthened.  The  authoress  of  this  book  of 
reminiscences  has  also  written  at  least  two  other  works, 
—  one  on  the  "  Education  of  Women/'  and  another 
describing  a  "Voyage  to  Naples." 

We  must  now  follow  Count  Rumford  to  another 
home,  to  which  he  betook  himself  for  relief,  and  with 
revived  expectations  of  quiet  happiness. 


CHAPTER    X. 

Count  Rumford  at  Auteuil.  —  Historical  and  Tragic  Inter- 
est of  his  Dwelling.  —  His  Daughter  s  Voyage  to  rejoin 
him,  —  ffer  Capture.  —  Correspondence  with  Sir  Charles 
Elagden.  —  Her  Arrival  at  Auteuil.  —  Her  Letter  to 
Mr.  J.  F.  Baldwin.  —  The  Count1  s  Letters  to  him.  — 
The  Count's  Letters  to  his  Mother.  —  The  Daughter  s 
Reception.  —  Description  of  her  Father  s  Home  and  Cir- 
cumstances. —  Visits  from  Madame  Lavoisier  de  Rumford. 
—  Projected  Work  on  Order.  —  The  Count1  s  Scientific 
Labors  as  Foreign  Associate  of  the  French  Institute.  — 
Papers  read  before  it.  —  Three  more  Essays.  —  Experi- 
ments of  Broad  Wheels  for  Carriages.  —  His  Calorimeter 
and  Photometer.  —  Life  with  his  Daughter.  —  Drives 
and  Visits.  —  His  Intimate  Friends.  —  Visit'  of  Davy  to 
Auteuil.  —  The  Count's  last  Days.  —  His  Death.  —  His 
Daughter  s  Strange  Notions  about  that.  Event.  —  An- 
nouncement of  his  Death.  —  His  Funeral.  —  Ear  on  De- 
les serfs  Address  at  his  Grave.  —  A  Woman  s  Tribute.  — 
Cuviers  Eloge.  —  Notices  of  the  Count's  Death  and 
Character  in  England.  —  Mr.  Underwoodys  Sketch  of 
him.  —  Dr.  Young  s.  — Colonel  Baldwin  s. —  Count  Rum- 
ford's  Grave  and  Monument.  —  His  last  Will.  —  Rum- 
ford  Professorship  at  Harvard  College.  —  Dr.  Eigelow  s 
Discourse.  —  The  Daughter  s  Subsequent  Life.  —  Corres- 
pondence.—  Her  Final  Return  to  America.  —  Her  Death 
and  Bequests.  —  Rumford' s  Statue  at  Munich. 

COUNT  RUMFORD,   recovering,  as  he  said,  his 
independence,  sought  to  enjoy  it  under  such  con- 


Lifj  of  Count  Rumford.  587 

ditions  and  circumstances  of  private  life  as  his  means 
and  taste  dictated.  He  hired  an  estate  at  Auteuil, 
about  four  miles  from  Paris,  which  was  accessible  either 
by  a  pleasant  walk  or  by  a  drive,  and  by  the  river.  He 
laid  out  several  thousand  francs  in  arranging,  improv- 
ing, and  beautifying  the  house  and  grounds.  As  he  was 
passionately  fond  of  flowers,  his  garden  was  enriched 
by  the  choicest  that  he  could  obtain,  and  was  kept  in 
perfect  order.  He  spent  much  time  in  walking  and 
working  in  it. 

A.  very  interesting  history  attaches  to  this  dwelling 
of  his,  alike  before  and  after  his  occupancy  of  it.  From 
1772  to  1800  it  was  the  abode  of  that  celebrated 
woman,  Catherine  de  Lignville,  the  wife  and  widow  of 
Helvetius,  where  Dr.  Franklin  was  a  favored  visitor. 
It  was  there  that  the  lady,  in  presence  of  her  circle  of 
savans,  is  reported  to  have  said  to  Napoleon  Bonaparte, 
who  was  among  the  guests,'  "  Ah,  General,  if  you  only 
knew  how  to  be  happy  within  the  bounds  of  two  acres 
of  earth  !  "  —  a  remark  which  it  is  supposed  may  have 
been  recalled  to  his  mind  amid  his  meditations  at  St. 
Helena.  The  eminent  physician,  Cabanis,  was  the  next 
tenant  of  the  house. 

A  tragical  event  has  recently  made  even  more  famous 
the  house  numbered  "59  Rue  d'Auteuil,"  near  the  Bois 
de  Boulogne.  It  was  the  abode  of  Prince  Pierre  Bona- 
parte, cousin  of  the  Emperor  Louis  Napoleon.  On 
Monday,  January  10,  1870,  Victor  Noir  (whose  real 
name  was  Salmon,  or  Saloman,  a  Jew)  with  a  companion, 
both  of  them  acting  as  seconds  for  Grousset,  editor  of 
the  Marseillaise,  called  upon  the  Prince,  in  behalf  of  their 
principal.  An  altercation  ensued,  of  the  particulars  of 
which  there  are  irreconcilable  statements.  Victor  Noir 


588  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

was  instantly  killed  by  a  shot  from  the  pistol  of  the 
Prince,  in  the  main  apartment  which  had  witnessed  the 
scientific  labors  of  Rumford.* 

In  1838  two  streets  were  opened  in  the  quarter  of 
Paris  which  takes  in  the  former  suburb ;  one  of  them 
received  the  name  of  Rumford,  the  other  the  name  of  La- 
voisier, in  order,  as  a  French  friend  writes  to  me,  "  pour 
consacrer  la  memoire  de  deux  savans,  qui  s'ctaient 
unis  a  la  meme  epouse."  The  Boulevard  Malesherbes 
now  traverses  the  Rue  Lavoisier,  and  has  supplanted 
the  Rue  de  Rumford. 

Deferring  any  reference  to  the  Count's  mode  of  life 
at  Auteuil  till  I  can  quote  his  daughter's  account  of  it, 
when,  after  considerable  difficulty,  she  joined  him  there, 
I  am  glad  again  to  avail  myself  of  the  letters  of  Sir 
Charles  Blagden  for  information  of  interest.  The  ear- 
nest desire  of  the  Count  for  his  daughter's  companion- 
ship in  his  loneliness,  and  his  anxiety  and  disappoint- 
ment at  the  protracted  delay  of  Jier  arrival,  have  already 
been  fully  related. 

The  Countess  had  welcomed  her  father's  summons, 
and  her  longing  to  exchange  the  weariness  of  her  vacant 
mode  of  life  for  foreign  scenes  overcame  any  dread  she 
might  have  of  an  ocean  voyage,  amid  the  alarms  and 
annoyances  of  war.  She  left  her  home  early  in  the 
summer  of  i8n,f  and,  after  a  visit  at  Philadelphia, 


*  Engravings  of  the  house  and  of  the  room  are  given  in  the  Illustrated  London 
News  of  January  22,  1870. 

\  I  have  before  me  in  manuscript  a  poetical  piece  which  has  never  been  published, 
written  by  Miss  Elizabeth  Townsend,  of  Boston,  a  friend  of  the  Countess,  on  the 
occasion  of  her  voyage.  The  Rev.  Dr.  Cheever,  in  his  collection  of  American 
poems,  publishes  some  of  Miss  Townsend's  pieces,  and  in  a  note  to  one  of  them  says, 
"It  is  equal  in  grandeur  to  the  Thanatopsis  of  Bryant,  and  it  will  not  suffer  by  com- 
parison with  the  most  sublime  pieces  of  Wordsworth  or  of  Coleridge."  I  copy  a  few 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  589 

sailed  from  New  York  on  July  24  in  the  ship  Drum- 
mond,  which  was  captured,  as  a  suspected  blockade- 
runner,  by  the  brig  of  war  Cadmus,  off  Bordeaux,  and 
carried  into  Plymouth  September  7,  her  jewels  and 
other  personal  property  being  taken  from  her. 

The  Countess  wrote  to  Sir  Charles  Blagden  from  Ply- 
mouth on  September  9,  informing  him  of  the  annoying 
circumstances  under  which  she  had  arrived.  He  replied, 
from  Maidenhead,  on  September  13.  He  refers  to  sev- 
eral previous  letters  to  her,  which  she  seems  not  to  have 
received,  and  informs  her  that,  being  ill  at  the  house  of 
a  friend,  he  shall  not  be  able  to  visit  her.  Through  the 
help  of  that  friend,  Admiral  Sir  Charles  Pole,  he  puts 
her  in  the  way  of  recovering  her  effects,  by  advising  a 
simple  memorial  from  herself,  addressed  to  the  Lords 
of  the  Treasury,  stating  that  she  was  on  her  route  to 
join  her  father  in  France,  and  asking  that  her  goods  be 
restored  to  her  on  her  embarking  in  a  cartel  for  that 
country.  £<  If  their  lordships  take  no  notice  of  it,  you 
have  no  remedy,  but  must  pay  the  duty  on  what  you 
do  not  choose  to  lose,  and  leave  in  possession  of  the 
officers  of  the  customs  what  you  do  not  think  worth 
the  duty." 

lines  from  the  poem  in  my  hands,  for  the  sake  of  the  tribute  which  it  pays  to  the 
Countess's  father. 

"Cheer  him  who  cheers  a  grateful  age; 

And,  winged  by  duty,  fly  to  hail 

At  once  the  father  and  the  sage  ! 

Oft  the  false  lights  that  learning  shows 

But  lead  the  'wildered  wretch  astray  j 

The  Meteor,  Genius,  often  glows 

Only  to  dazzle  and  dismay. 

A  nobler  image  pictures  him  ;  — 

No  baleful  star  in  vengeance  hurled, 

The  central  orb,  whose  blessed  beam 

Not  only  lights,  but  warms,  the  world." 


590  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

So  thoughtful  was  Sir  Charles  for  her  proper  protec- 
tion, that,  as  he  writes,  on  seeing  with  regret  the  report 
of  her  capture  and  arrival  in  the  newspaper,*  he  at  once 
wrote  to  the  husband  of  a  New  York  lady  then  in  Lon- 
don, whose  address,  with  advice  to  call  on  her,  he  gives 
to  the  Countess,  naming  other  persons  on  whose  care 
she  could  rely  as  safe  friends. 

This  friendly  anxiety  of  Sir  Charles  exhibits  itself  in 
a  rather  more  serious  way  in  other  replies  of  his  to  the 
Countess,  dated  from  Cheltenham,  September  19  and 
22.  He  writes  :  — 

u  By  the  false  step  of  quitting  Plymouth  before  you  knew 
whether  there  was  any  one  in  London  on  whose  protection 
you  could  properly  rely,  you  have  certainly  brought  yourself 
into  a  disagreeable  situation.  Perhaps  the  best  thing  for  you  to 
do  would  be  to  return  thither  and  place  yourself  under  the 
protection  of  the  American  Consul,  Mr.  Hawker,  who  is  a 
most  respectable  gentleman,  with  a  wife  and  family,  well  known 
to  me.  But  if  you  think  it  best  to  remain  in  London,  by  all 
means  quit  your  hotel  [the  Bedford]  and  go  to  your  father's 
house  at  Brompton  Row,  which  is  now  empty,  and  taken  care 
of  by  the  Mason  family,  as  when  he  left  it.  Possibly  you  may 
find  little  or  no  furniture  in  it ;  but  enough  for  your  use  can 
easily  be  hired,  and  in  this  you  would  be  much  assisted  by  the 
mistress  of  my  lodgings,  at  No.  5  High  Row,  Knightsbridge, 
to  whom  I  will  give  you  a  note  on  the  last  page  of  this  letter." 

He  also  advises  her  in  reference  to  some  acquaint- 
ances which  she  had  formed,  which  he  would  have  her 
civilly  discontinue,  and  to  depend  chiefly  upon  "the 

*  Sir  Charles  doubtless  read  the  following  letter  from  Plymouth,  dated  September 
7,  in  the  London  Morning  Chronicle  of  September  10,  1811:  "The  American 
ship  Drummond,  Captain  Woodbury  Langdon,  which  has  been  detained  'and  sent  in 
here  for  breach  of  blockade  by  the  Cadmus,  brig  of  war,  was  fallen  in  with  off  Bor- 
deaux, on  her  passage  from  New  York.  She  has  on  board  seventeen  passengers, 
among  whom  are  Sir  James  Joy  and  Countess  Sarah  Rumford." 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  591 

Higginsons,  who  were  your  father's  friends  as  well  as 
yours,  and,  I  have  no  doubt,  are  people  of  good  char- 
acter." He  emphatically  enforces  upon  her  the  counsel 
that  she  should  not  delay  a  moment  in  proceeding  to 
join  her  father  in  France. 

Sir  Charles  writes  again,  October  i,  i8ir,  thus:  — 

* 

"  Your  letter  of  the  2gth  arrived  this  day,  and  I  write  im- 
mediately, lest  you  should  be  set  off,  as  you  expect  that  Mr. 
Langdon  has  procured  your  passport.  I  think  you  had  better 
have  stayed  at  your  father's  house  than  have  gone  to  board  with 
Mrs.  Eddy,  or  any  one  else.  But  this  must  partly  be  deter- 
mined by  your  own  feelings.  You  did  right  not  to  go  to  the 
play  with  Mrs.  Langdon  alone.  By  all  means  put  yourself 
under  the  care  and  protection  of  Sir  James  Joy  for  your  voyage 
to  France.  You  have  done  well  in  taking  care  of  your  father's 
things  at  Brompton.  It  will  be  something  to  tell  him  when 
you  arrive  in  France.  The  house  was  let  to  people  who,  I 
fear,  did  not  treat  it  well.  Sir  Joseph  Banks  told  me  that 
Lady  Banks  would  receive  you  kindly  whenever  you  should 
come  to  England.  Your  father  consulted  Dr.  Blane  formerly 
as  a  physician,  chiefly,  I  believe,  by  the  recommendation  of  Lady 
Palmerston,  and  he  was  well  satisfied  with  the  Doctor.  Take 
care  how  or  with  whom  you  go  to  the  play.  It  is  very  possi- 
ble that  much  of  the  happiness  of  your  future  life  may  depend 
on  the  prudence  of  your  conduct  here,  before  you  go  to  France. 
Though  your  father  be  parted  from  his  wife,  yet  I  advise  you 
to  seek  her  friendship  as  far  as  you  can  do  it  without  offending 
him.  I  have  often  talked  with  her  about  you.  As  far  as  I  can 
recollect,  there  is  nothing  of  mine  at  the  house  in  Brompton 
Row  but  *a  large  trunk  of  books  in  the  strong  room  where  the 
chief  part  of  the  Count's  things  are  kept,"  &c.,  &c. 

There  is  certainly  more  of  the  guardian  than  of  the 
lover  in  the  next  letter  of  Sir  Charles  to  the  Countess, 
dated  at  Cheltenham,  October  7,  1811,  as  follows:  — 


592  Life  of  Coitnt  Rum  ford. 

"  MY  DEAR  COUNTESS,  —  As  I  have  your  real  welfare 
sincerely  at  heart,  it  would  give  me  much  greater  satisfaction 
to  hear  that  you  were  safe  in  France  under  your  father's  protec- 
tion than  to  see  you  in  London,  or  elsewhere.  It  is  not  rea- 
sonable for  you  to  expect  that  I  should  give  up  the  necessary 
attentions  to  my  own  relatives,  or  risk  a  relapse,  by  hurrying 
hundreds  of  miles  about  the  country,  merely  for  the  sake  of 
passing  a  few  hours  with  you  this  year.  You  might  expect  it 
from  a  lover,  but  not  from  a  friend.  And  as  you  are  now  come 
to  settle  in  Europe,  I  may  hope  to  have  many  other  opportuni- 
ties of  enjoying  your  society.  Allow  me  to  add  that  I  do  not 
well  comprehend  what  you  are  doing,  but  1  begin  to  doubt  from 
your  letters  whether  your  experience  of  the  world  has  yet  given 
you  that  coolness  of  head  and  discreet  judgment  which  your 
father  was  so  desirous  of  your  acquiring.  Among  the  persons 
you  mention  the  only  one  whose  character  I  know  well  is  Dr. 
Blane,  and  I  believe  you  will  find  him  of  more  use  than  all  the 
rest  put  together.  So  take  care  not  to  disgust  him.  How  you 
can  attach  so  much  consequence  to  seeing  a  play,  when  you 
have  such  great  interests  at  stake,  is  to  me  incomprehensible. 
You  now  see  that  it  will  be  necessary  for  you  to  return  to 
Plymouth,  whence  you  ought  never  to  have  gone.  You  must 
judge  from  what  you  learn  about  your  passport  what  is  the 
proper  time  for  quitting  London." 

He  adds  some  advice  about  the  house  at  Brompton, 
and  he  tells  her,  when  she  shall  see  her  father,  to  say  to 
him  {C  that  it  will  undoubtedly  be  for  his  interest  to  let 
it,  as  no  good  can  attend  the  keeping  it,  as  at  present, 
to  perish." 

It  would  seem  as  if  the  Countess,  however  impatient 
she  might  be  to  reach  her  destination  at  her  father's 
home,  was  inclined  to  improve  her  opportunities  while 
detained  on  her  way.  The  tone  in  which  her  evidently 
discreet  and  faithful  friend,  Sir  Charles,  indulges  in  his 
letters  to  her  plainly  implies  that,  while  he  had  be- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  593 

come  quite  reconciled  to  give  over  any  wish  that  he 
might  previously  have  entertained  to  hold  toward  her 
the  protective  authority  of  a  husband,  he  regarded  her 
as  needing  some  influence  to  overrule  her  own  volatile  in- 
clinations. He  was  himself  at  the  time  very  ill,  and  also 
engrossed  in  his  sympathies  by  the  illness  of  relatives 
very  dear  to  him.  His  magnanimity  and  generosity 
of  spirit  are  quite  observable  in  that,  while  alienated 
from  the  father  and  a  rejected  suitor  of  the  daughter, 
he  exhibits  such  a  sincere  anxiety  and  interest  in  her 
behalf  amid  the  risks  of  the  metropolis.  I  have  been 
informed  by  an  intimate  friend  of  the  Countess,  that 
she  herself  in  confidence  avowed 'that,  before  she  re- 
turned to  America  from  her  first  European  visit,  she 
would  willingly  have  married  Sir  Charles,  but  as  he 
was  poor,  and  her  father  was  unable  to  give  her  an 
establishment  suited  to  her  rank  and  his  wishes,  he 
withstood  her  inclinations. 

I  have  found  among  the  papers  of  the  late  Mr.  James 
F.  Baldwin  the  following  interesting  letters,  in  the  first 
of  which  the  Countess  informs  him  of  her  voyage  and 
of  her  having  reached  her  father's  house. 

"  AUTEUIL,  December  7,  1811. 

"  MY  FRIEND,  —  I  arrived  here  about  a  week  ago  in  perfect 
health,  after  a  journey  of  six  months  and  some  days.  It  was 
very  long,  to  be  sure,  but  very  fortunate.  I  must  say  I  found 
friends  everywhere,  and  not  half  so  many  difficulties  as  I  was 
led  to  expect  from  the  difficulty  of  the  times. 

u  We  sailed  from  New  York  the  24th  July,  and  had  a  very 
agreeable,  fine  passage  ;  but  the  24th  August  were  taken  just 
off  Bordeaux,  and  the  5th  of  September  we  arrived  in  Plymouth, 
where  I  stayed  till  the  I4th,  then  went  up  to  London.  I  was 
not  at  all  sorry  to  be  taken,  for  I  had  a  charming  visit  in  Lon- 
38 


594  Life  of  Count  Riimford. 

don,  and  at  my  father's  house  at  Brompton  Row,  and  it  only 
retarded  my  progress  a  little.  The  2ist  October  I  left  London 
and  returned  to  Plymouth,  but  did  not  leave  Plymouth  till  the 
1 2th  November;  and  that  was  the  only  tedious  part  of  my 
journey,  we  being  obliged  to  wait  so  long  at  Plymouth  for  a 
wind,  and  the  season  being  so  far  advanced  it  was  very  unpleas- 
ant weather.  However,  after  being  once  embarked,  we  arrived 
in  about  twenty-four  hours  at  Morlaix,  where  I  remained  from 
the  I3th  to  the  25th,  waiting  for  a  gentleman,  who  was  to  come 
with  me,  to  procure  his  passport,  —  my  father  having  already 
sent  me  mine,  he  having  received  the  intelligence  of  my  being 
taken,  and  taken  his  measures  accordingly.  It  is  nearly  five 
hundred  miles  from  Morlaix  to  Paris,  and  we  were  nearly  a 
week  coming,  but  we  had  a  delightful  journey.  Indeed,  all  my 
journeys  were  prosperous  and  pleasant.  I  think  I  never  had  so 
pleasant  a  one  in  my  life  as  from  Plymouth  to  London,  and 
from  Boston  to  the  southward  it  was  by  no  means  unpleasant. 
I  made  a  little  tour  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Barnard  to  Philadelphia, 
likewise  ;  so  that  I  have  really  been  in  a  number  of  fine  cities 
since  I  saw  you,  —  Philadelphia,  New  York,  London,  and  now 
Paris.  It  is  quite  amusing  to  me  to  be  able  to  compare  all  the 
places  one  with  another. 

"  I  have  mentioned  to  my  father  what  you  said  about  trans- 
acting business  for  him  [in  place  of  the  Count's  late  friend,  the 
father  of  her  correspondent],  and  he  was  very  much  pleased, 
with  what  I  was  able  to  inform  him  of  you,  to  intrust  it  in  your 
hands.  He  has  gone  to  Paris  to-day,  almost  for  the  sole  pur- 
pose of  getting  a  power  of  attorney  drawn  up  to  send  to  you  to 
receive  the  property  he  has  in  the  American  funds,  out  of  which 
he  wishes  you  to  pay  grandmamma  every  26th  of  March  two 
hundred  dollars,  and  the  residue  to  place  at  interest,  or  do  the 
best  you  can  with  it  ;  but  he  will  give  you  more  particular  di- 
rections, without  doubt,  with  the  power  of  attorney.  He, 
however,  desired  me  to  mention  to  you,  in  case  he  should  not  be 
able  to  get  the  power  of  attorney  to  send  by  this  opportunity, 
and  in  case  there  should  be  some  little  delay  in  transacting  the 
business,  that  he  would  take  it  as  a  favor  if  you  would  advance 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  595 

grandmamma  her  two  hundred  dollars  for  this  time,  that  she 
may  not  want  for  money,  —  for  which,  of  course,  he  will  pay 
you  interest.  And  when  you  get  the  money  concerns  into  your 
own  hands,  you  know  you  can  pay  yourself.  But  this  is  in  case 
he  is  not  able  to  procure  the  power  of  attorney  immediately. 
He  did  not  foresee  the  least  difficulty,  and  I  hope  all  arrange- 
ments will  be  made  now,  for  this  is  an  excellent  opportunity  by 
Captain  Hull,  in  the  Constitution. 

"  As  to  my  concerns  of  money  with  you,  if  I  was  sure  you 
had  been  able  to  pay  it  to  Mr.  Hancock,  I  should  draw  upon 
him  for  it,  I  wishing  it  here.  And  I  had  rather  draw  on  him 
than  you,  as  he  had  already  some  money  of  mine  from  the  old 
stock,  and  I  wish  it  all  together.  I  will  thank  you  to  write  to 
,me  as  soon  as  you  have  an  opportunity,  and  let  me  know  how  I 
stand,  and  speak  to  Mr.  Hancock,  if  you  please,  and  tell  him  I 
shall  be  glad  of  the  money,  and  shall  draw  upon  him  for  it  by 
the  first  good  opportunity. 

cc  You  must  not  fail  to  let  me  hear  from  you  from  time  to 
time.  I  shall  always  be  happy  to  hear  of  your  welfare  and 
happiness,  as  likewise  that  of  your  family.  I  will  thank  you  to 
remember  me  kindly  to  all.  I  have  seen  little  of  Paris  as  yet, 
therefore  cannot  say  much  about  it.  But  my  father's  situation 
at  this  place,  which  is  about  four  miles  from  Paris,  I  find  very 
pleasant,  and  I  see  nothing  to  prevent  me  from  being  very  happy 
here.  My  father  is  in  excellent  health.  I  never  knew  him 
better. 

"  Believe  me  your  sincere  friend, 

"S.  RUMFORD. 

"  MR.  JAMES  F.  BALDWIN,  Merchant,  Boston." 

The  life-long  friend  and  the  faithful  correspondent  and 
American  agent  of  Count  Rumford,  Colonel  Loammi 
Baldwin,  having  died,  as  before  stated,  October  20, 
1807,  tne  daughter  had  recommended  to  her  father  to 
find  a  substitute  in  that  one  of  his  sons  with  whom 
she  had  formed  a  strong  friendship,  and  who  to  the  close 


596  Life  of  Count  R^tmford. 

of  her  long  life  was  her  adviser  and  then  her  executor. 
I  am  able  to  give  from  his  papers  the  following  letters 
addressed  to  him  by  Rumford. 

"  AUTEUIL,  near  Paris,  8l.h  Dec1!    1811. 

"DEAR  SIR, —  The  friendship  which  subsisted  between  your 
late  worthy  father  and  myself  would  alone  have  been  sufficient 
to  have  induced  me  to  apply  to  you  on  the  present  occasion  ; 
but  the  excellent  character  that  has  been  given  of  you  by  my 
Daughter,  who  is  just  arrived  here,  has  not  allowed  me  to  hesi- 
tate one  moment  in  the  choice  of  a  friend  to  assist  me  in  fulfil- 
ling the  most  sacred  of  duties,  that  of  taking  care  of  an  aged 
parent. 

u  I  shall  send  you  herewith  a  power  of  attorney  authorising 
you  to  receive  the  dividends  that  are  or  may  become  due  to  me 
for  stock  in  the  funds  of  the  United  States.  This  stock, 
amounting  to  Ten  Thousand  Dollars,  is  in  the  3  per  cents; 
consequently  the  interest  which  you  will  have  to  receive  on 
account  of  it  will  amount  to  300  dollars  a  year :  and  of  that 
sum  I  request  that  you  would  pay  to  my  Mother,  Mrs.  Ruth 
Pierce,  Widow,  Two  Hundred  and  forty  dollars  a  year,  in  two 
payments  of  120  dollars  every  six  months,  at  such  periods  as 
she  may  prefer.  The  remainder  of  the  annual  income  of  300 
dollars,  amounting  to  60  dollars  a  year,  you  will  be  so  good  as 
to  place  from  time  to  time,  at  interest,  and  in  my  name,  in 
order  to  accumulate  and  form  a  small  capital,  that  may  be  ready 
to  be  disposed  of  to  answer  any  sudden  demand,  in  case  of  any 
unforeseen  accident.  As  all  correspondence  between  this  coun- 
try and  England  is  forbidden,  I  shall  not  venture  to  write  to  my 
Bankers  in  London,  Messrs.  Herries,  Farquhar,  &  Co.,  of  St. 
James'  St.,  who  have  hitherto  been  my  agents  for  receiving  my 
dividends  on  my  American  stock.  But  I  beg  you  would  take 
the  earliest  opportunity  of  writing  to  them  on  my  behalf,  to 
acquaint  them  with  my  having  given  you  a  power  of  attorney 
for  receiving  those  dividends  in  future,  and  that  they  will  in 
future  receive  no  drafts  on  them  for  my  account. 

"  I  request  that  you  would  forward  the  enclosed  letter  by  a 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  597 

safe  conveyance.  When  you  write  to  me  you  will  be  so  good 
as  to  address  your  letters  to  Count  Rumford,  aux  soins  de 
Messrs.  Delessert  &  Co.,  Rue  Coqheron,  a  Paris.  Begging  you 
would  remember  me  kindly  to  all  those  persons  of  your  family 
who  remember  me,  I  am,  Dear  Sir,  with  much  esteem  and 
regard, 

"  Your  Obedient  Servant, 

"  RUMFORD. 
"To  MR.  JAMES  F.  BALDWIN,  Merchant  in  Boston." 

"  AUTEUIL,  near  Paris,  15th  Feb.  1812. 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  took  the  liberty  some  weeks  ago  to  write 
to  you  and  to  transmit  to  you  a  Power  of  Attorney,  authorising 
you  to  receive  ,the  dividends  on  Ten  Thousand  dollars  Three 
per  cent  stock  in  the  public  funds  of  the  United  States,  Having 
since  transferred  by  a  deed  of  gift  the  whole  of  that  stock  to  my 
Dear  Mother,  for  whose  use  I  purchased  it  originally,  your 
power  will  of  course  cease  to  have  effect,  and  you  will  give 
yourself  no  further  trouble  in  this  business.  It  remains  for  me 
to  ask  your  pardon  for  the  trouble  I  have  already  given  you, 
and  to  assure  you  of  the  sincere  regard  with  which  I  remain 
"  Your  Obedient  Servant, 

"  RUMFORD." 

This  final  arrangement  of  the  Count  in  a  provision 
for  his  mother,  which  at  the  time  was  most  generous 
and  ample,  was  the  completion  of  his  long-continued 
care  for  her  comfort.  He  had  written  to  her  soon  after 
his  arrival  in  London,  by  date  November  i,  1795, 
having,  while  in  Bavaria,  sent  her  annually  the  interest 
of  five  hundred  pounds  sterling,  that  the  principal 
belonged  to  her.  So  he  adds,  "  I  have  now  come  to 
a  resolution  to  transfer  the  property  I  have  destined 
for  you  into  the  American  funds,  and  to  send  you 
a  power  of  attorney  for  receiving  the  interest  regularly 
at  Boston.  Or,  if  you  please,  I  will  transfer  the  capi- 


598  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

tal  at  once  to  you,  and  have  it  entered  in  your  name  in 
the  books  of  the  United  States.  It  will  then  be  yours, 
to  all  intents  and  purposes,  and  you  may  dispose  of  it 
as  you  think  proper." 

For  some  reason  satisfactory  to  the  parties  concerned, 
the  mother  Hid  not  at  that  time  dispense  with  an  agent 
in  the  collection  of  her  dividends. 

The  Count  had  written  to  his  mother  in  1804,  from 
Paris,  as  follows  :  — 

"I  know  how  much  you  interest  yourself  for  all  your  chil- 
dren, and  especially  for  those  of  them  who  have  been  unfor- 
tunate in  the  world,  and  who  stand  most  in  need  of  your 
assistance.  Of  the  five  thousand  dollars  in  the  American 
funds,  which  I  desired-  you  to  dispose  of  among  your  children 
by  will,  you  were  so  kind  to  my  daughter  Sally  as  to  bequeath 
to  her  one  Thousand.  As  I  have  made  ample  provision  for 
Sally  myself,  I  desire  you  would  make  a  new  will,  and  give  to 
my  sister  Ruth,  who,  I  hear,  has  been  unfortunate  in  life,  the 
thousand  dollars  in  addition  which  you  had  destined  for  Sally. 
My  Dear  Mother,  I  cannot  refuse  myself  the  pleasure  of  giving 
you  a  larger  sum  to  dispose  of  among  those  you  love.  I  have 
Five  Thousand  Dollars  more  in  the  American  stocks,  which  I 
request  you  would  dispose  of  among  your  children  and  grand- 
children, by  your  will. 

"  It  will  give  you  pleasure  to  know  that  I  enjoy  very  good 
health.  The  air  of  France  agrees  with  me  better  than  the  air 
of  Germany,  or  that  of  England,  and  I  am  very  happy  here.  I 
shall  go  to  England  and  Germany  occasionally,  but  my  principal 
residence  will,  in  future,  be  in  Paris.  It  is  not,  however,  my 
intention  to  become  a  French  citizen. 

Again  the  Count  writes  from  Paris,  July  22,  1806:  — 

lc  I  should  be  much  less  anxious,  on  your  account,  my  Dear 
Mother,  if  I  knew  that  Sally  was  with  you  to  assist  and  take 
care  of  you.  If  more  money  should  be  wanted  to  make  you 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  599 

both  comfortable  than  what  I  have  hitherto  furnished,  I  have 
written  to  Sajly  to  say,  that  instead  of  eight  hundred  dollars 
I  am  ready  and  willing  to  furnish  one  thousand  dollars  a 
year.  It  is  my  most  earnest  desire  to  make  you  as  comfortable 
as  possible,  and  that  everything  should  be  arranged  as  you  like 
best." 

• 
In  a  letter  to  his  mother,  dated  Paris,  December  i, 

1808,  the  Count  requests  her  to  have  her  picture  taken 
"  by  one  of  the  best  limners  in  Boston,"  and  to  send  it 
to  him.  He  writes  :  "  You  can  hardly  conceive  how 
much  I  have  your  happiness  and  comfort  at  heart. 
Give  my  kind  love  to  all  my  relations  and  friends. 
They  will,  no  doubt,  have  nearly  forgotten  me  ;  but  I 
never  can  forget  the  place  of  my  birth,  and  the  com- 
panions of  my  early  years.  My  life  appears  to  me  like 
a  dream.  I  have  been  very  successful;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  I  have  been  uncommonly  active  and  enter- 
prising. It  affords  me  the  greatest  satisfaction  to  think 
you  are  satisfied  with  the  conduct  of  your  son." 

When  the  Count  made  the  direct  deed  of  gift  to  his 
mother  referred  to  in  his  letter  of  February,  1812,*  to 
Mr.  J.  F.  Baldwin,  he  accompanied  it  with  these  kind 
words  :  — 

"  I  desire  that  you  will  accept  of  it  as  a  token  of  my  dutiful 
affection  for  you,  and  of  my  gratitude  for  the  kind  care  you 
took  of  me  in  the  early  part  of  my  life.  I  have  the  greatest 
satisfaction  in  being  able  to  show  my  gratitude  for  all  your  good- 
ness to  me,  and  to  contribute  to  your  ease  and  comfort.  I 
request  that  you  will  consider  this  donation  as  being  perfectly 
free  and  unconditional,  and  that  you  would  enjoy  and  dispose 
of  what  is  now  your  property  just  as  you  shall  think  best  and 

*  In  a  note  to  page'u,  I  have  quoted  the  statement  of  a  grandson  of  Count  Rum- 
ford's  mother,  that  she  died  June  n,  1811.  The  grandson  or  the  printer  is  in  error 
as  to  the  date. 


600  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

most  conducive  to  your  happiness  and  to  your  satisfaction,  with- 
out any  regard  to  any  former  arrangements  you  may  have  made 
at  my  request. 

"  My  health  continues  to  be  good,  and  I  yet  feel  none  of 
those  infirmities  of  age  which  sometimes  render  the  evening  of 
life  painful.  I  have  the  satisfaction  to  think  that  I  have  done 
my  duty  through  life,  and  that  is  a  great  consolation  to  me  as  I 
approach  the  end  of  my  course.  I  shall  never  cease  to  be,  my 
Dear  Mother,  your  dutiful  and  affectionate  child, 

"BENJAMIN." 

When  the  Count  wrote  that  letter,  it  was  long  since 
he  had  been  addressed  by  the  name  of  his  childhood, 
which  brought  him  so  near  to  his  mother.  It  would 
not  have  pleased  us  to  have  had  that  letter  closed  with 
his  noble  title,  even  had  it  been  nobler  still. 

How  should  we  have  valued  a  letter  from  the  mother 
to  her  son,  addressed  to  him  by  either  of  his  names  ! 

Sarah  says  that  she  quite  delighted  her  father  on  her 
arrival,  and  he  thought  she  looked  remarkably  well. 
She  adds  that  she  of  course  "  was  happy  to  meet  him, 
and  to  partake  once  more  of  his  society  and  that  of 
his  numerous  agreeable  acquaintances,  and  above  all  to 
enjoy  the  quiet  security  of  his  paternal  love  and  protec- 
tion, of  which  she  had  been  deprived  for  so  many 
years.  For  a  time,  as  things  went  on,  nothing  could 
be  better."  The  Count  gave  her  a  sad  rehearsal  of  the 
melancholy  and  the  annoyances  which  he  had  suffered 
at  intervals  before  her  coming.  He  said:  "I  have  not 
deserved  to  have  so  many  enemies  as  I  find  around 
me.  But  it  is  all  from  coming  into  France  and  form- 
ing this  horrible  connection.  I  believe  that  woman  was 
born  to  be  the  torment  of  my  life.  I  would  forgive 
her  for  what  is  past,  if  I  could  be  left  in  quiet  now. 
But  I  cannot,  nor  shall  I  be,  this  side  the  grave.  I  am 


Life  of  Count  R'timford.  60 1 

obliged  to  avoid  with  the  utmost  care  an  appearance  of 
being  concerned  in  the  public  transactions  of  the  day." 
The  daughter  writes  :  — 

''  My  father's  establishment  was  not,  of  course,  what  it  used 
to  be  at  Munich,  he  being  there  at  home,  useful  in  his  way, 
beloved  and  respected.  Here,  there  being  nothing  of  the  kind, 
made  a  great  difference.  I  found  him  much  changed  since  I 
parted  from  him.  He  had  been  very  ill,  but  was  getting  better. 
The  first  salutations  over,  his  hat  being  called  for,  we  took  a 
walk  in  the  extensive  garden  which  he  had  laid  out  with  great 
care,  and  made  very  beautiful.  He  had  written  to  me  about  it, 
but  I  found  it  much  finer  than  I  had  expected.  It  covered  over 
two  acres,  with  tufted  woods  and  winding  paths,  with  grapes  in 
abundance,  and  fifty  kinds  of  roses.  A  gardener  was  constantly 
employed,  with  a  laborer  under  him.  My  father  was  exceed- 
ingly fond  of  flowers,  and,  in  order  to  gratify  him  in  making 
things  as  agreeable  as  possible  to  him,  a  young  person  —  either 
housekeeper,  companion,  or  both  —  put  them  in  every  place 
where  he  was  likely  to  set  his  foot  or  turn  his  eye.  We  dined 
late,  when  candle-light  was  required.  Luckily  my  eyesight 
was  strong,  as  appeared  to  be  the  case  with  my  father,  or  it 
must  have  been  essentially  injured  by  the  glare  of  the  lamps. 
The  singing  birds  which  greeted  our  entrance  to  the  dinner- 
table  made  it  a  perfect  enchantment.  I  used  to  think  I  would 
count  the  number  of  the  warblers  the  scene  boasted  of,  but  I 
never  came  to  the  end  of  it. 

"  The  Count  would  often  say  that  his  home  seemed  to  him 
as  it  used  to  do.  His  daughter,  not  being  at  all  of  a  melancholy 
cast,  would  hit  upon  little  ways  to  amuse  him,  and  spend  much 
of  her  time  in  running  about  the  garden  with  him.  His  horses 
were  so  gay  and  fiery  as  to  require  an  assistant  to  the  coach- 
man in  taking  care  of  them.  The  coachman  not  being  equal 
in  skill  to  the  one  he  had  left  at  the  house  of  his  separated  lady 
in  the  Rue  d'Anjou,  the  Count  sent  a  proposition  to  Madame 
to  buy  of  him  his  span  of  fine  horses.  She  consented  to  do  so. 
The  Count  often  told  laughingly  of  the  sale  of  these  horses  to 


602  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

her.  When  he  made  to  her  the  proposal  of  sale  she  replied, 
1  O  yes,  I  will  buy  them  ;  but,  pray,  don't  cheat  me,  for  I  am 
told  that  father  and  mother  will  cheat  each  other  in  horses.' 
•  "  I  had  not  been  many  days  at  Auteuil  before  we  had  a  visit 
from  his  separated  lady,  for  they  seemed  to  be  on  good  terms, 
at  least,  on  visiting  terms.  The  lady  was  gracious  to  me,  and  I 
was  charmed  with  her,  nor  did  I  ever  after  find  reason  to  be 
otherwise,  for  she  was  truly  an  admirable  character.  Their 
disagreements  must  have  arisen  from  their  independence  of 
character  and  means,  being  used  always  to  having  their  own 
ways.  Their  pursuits  in  some  particulars  were  different.  He 
was  fond  of  his  experiments,  and  she  of  company.  Their  circles, 
too,  were  naturally  more  attached  to  her  (they  being  her  old 
associates)  than  to  my  father.  Possibly,  too,  he  might  not  be 
so  well  viewed  by  some  of  the  convives,  fearing  the  three  mil- 
lions of  francs  might  be  in  more  or  less  danger.  All  this  made 
my  father  enemies,  and  when  once  there  was  a  breach,  ever  so 
trifling,  nothing  was  easier  than  to  widen  it. 

"  It  was  a  fine  match,  could  they  but  have  agreed.  It  was 
said  by  everybody,  both  friends  and  foes,  that  though  the  first 
flush  of  youth  was  past,  it  was  decidedly  a  love-match.  I  can 
easily  believe  it,  for  my  father  was  very  playful  in  his  character, 
even  lovely  at  times,  and  much  handsomer  for  a  man  than  she 
was  for  a  woman,  and  certainly  of  quite  as  much  celebrity  in 
the  world." 

It  is  pleasant  to  read  this  kindly  estimate  of  the 
"  separated  lady,'*  from  the  actual  observation  and  inter- 
course of  the  Countess.  The  latter  drops  a  hint  in  a 
fragment  of  her  gossip,  that  two  nieces  of  the  lady,  from 
interested  motives,  did  all  they  could  to  widen  the 
breach  with  the  Count,  and  to  keep  him  in  a  state  of 
irritation.  She  writes  that  once  on  a  drive  with  her 
father,  as  they  passed  near  the  lady's  house,  and  the 
conversation  turned  upon  her,  she  said,  "  in  an  artless 
manner  that  was  natural  to  her,  c  How  odd  it  is,  my 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  603 

dear  father,  that  you  and  Madame  de  Rumford  cannot 
make  it  out  to  live  together,  when  you  seem  so  friendly 
to  each  other !  Here  it  is  three  or  four  times  only 
since  I  have  been  here  that  she  has  been  out  to  see  us, 
and  even  teazing  us  to  go  oftener  to  visit  her.  It 
strikes  me  she  cannot  be  in  her  right  mind/ 

"  c  Her  mind  is  as  it  ever  has  been,'  replied  the 
Count,  c  to  act  differently  from  what  she  appears/  •' 

The  Countess  intimates  that  the  lady  was  very  penu- 
rious, while  the  Count  was  lavish;  "money  fading 
away  in  his  hands  like  water  when  any  of  his  plans  were 
concerned." 

Of  the  mode  of  life  and  of  the  occupations  of  Count 
Rumford  in  the  interval  between  his  daughter's  return 
to  him  and  his  death,  some  of  the  most  interesting 
information  is  here  deferred,  because  it  will  be  found  in 
a  most  authentic  form  as  given  by  a  friend,  whose  com- 
memorative tribute  after  his  decease  will  be  copied  into 
these  pages.  The  Countess  says  that  he  kept  himself 
busily  occupied  with  his  scientific  and  literary  pursuits, 
though  he  became  more  and  more  disposed  to  seclude 
himself  from  the  world.  He  narrowed  his  circle  of 
intimacies,  but  found  much  satisfaction  in  the  compan- 
ionship of  the  few  friends  who  came  closest  to  him.  He 
was  devoting  his  mind  and  pen  with  much  zeal  and 
interest  to  the  composition  of  a  work  on  "The  Nature 
and  Effects  of  Order"  that  almost  deified  object  of  his 
regard,  already  mentioned  as  offering  to  him  the  guid- 
ing rule  and  method  of  life.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that 
he  left  only  fragments  of  that  intended  treatise,  which,  as 
found  among  his  papers,  did  not  appear  to  his  friends  to 
admit  of  publication,  and  which  I  infer  were  destroyed 
by  his  daughter  when  his  effects  came  into  her  hands. 


604  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

As  one  of  the  eight  Foreign  Associates  of  the  Institute 
of  France,  elected  in  1803,  we  can  trace  some  of  his 
labors  and  investigations  and  the  results  of  them  while 
he  resided  in  Paris,  in  the  journals  of  that  body,  and 
in  the  republication  or  sketches  of  some  of  his  papers 
in  the  Bibliotheque  Britannique.  Either  a  translation 
or  the  original  English  of  some  of  these  papers  was 
transmitted  to  be  read  before  the  Royal  Society.  On 
March  9,  1807,  he  read  before  the  Institute  a  paper  on 
The  Adhesion  of  Molecules  in  Liquids.  He  says  he 
had  begun  to  experiment  on  oxygen  in  1786.  He 
had  read  a  paper  to  his  class,  June  16,  1806,  founded 
upon  a  memoir  on  it  which  he  had  composed  in  1800, 
which  he  had  shown  the  next  year  to  Pictet  on  his 
visit  to  England,  and  which  he  had  brought  before 
the  savans  in  Paris  in  1802.  In  Vol.  XXXV.  of  the 
Bibliotheque  Britannique  is  a  description  of  a  new 
boiler  for  economizing  heat  and  fuel,  which  Rum- 
ford  had  read  before  the  Institute,  October  6,  1806, 
and  which  was  published  in  Nicholson's  Journal  in 
Ju-ne,  1807. 

The  Count  devoted  much  time  to  experimenting 
upon  the  draught  of  carts  and  carriages  with  broad  or 
narrow  rims  to  their  wheels.  It  had  been  supposed  that 
broad  wheels,  by  presenting  a  greater  surface  for  friction, 
required  a  greater  draught.  But  in  the  vast  amount  of 
heavy  transportation  over  the  roads  of  France  during 
the  war,  it  was  found  that  those  roads  were  so  cut  up, 
and  in  such  constant  need  of  costly  repair,  that  a  great 
saving  was  effected  by  making  the  rims  of  wheels 
broader.  Rumford  experimented  with  a  view  to  prove 
that  the  change  also  very  much  lessened  the  draught.  He 
read  a  paper  before  the  first  class  of  the  Institute,  April 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  605 

15,  i8ii5*  on  his  Experiments  and  Observations  on 
the  Advantage  of  Wheels  with  Broad  Rims  for  Car- 
riages, etc.  He  speaks  of  his  trip  in  the  previous 
autumn  in  which  he  had  consulted  wheelwrights  on  the 
subject.  He  had  a  carriage  constructed  for  himself  on 
the  plan  which  he  advocated,  as  soon  as  he  returned  to 
Paris,  and  he  braved  the  ridicule  which  was  sometimes 
drawn  upon  him  as  he  drove  in  it  through  the  streets.  He 
also  contrived  an  instrument,  to  be  attached  to  the  front 
of  his  vehicle,  for  measuring  the  force  required  to  draw 
it  with  three  different  sets  of  wheels,  and  he  gives  the 
results  of  his  trial  on  different  kinds  of  roads,  to  de- 
termine the  difference  of  draught  as  depending  either 
upon  the  velocity  of  the  motion  or  the  nature  of  the 
road. 

On  June  24,  1811,  he  read  a  paper  of  his  Experi- 
ments on  the  Means  of  perfecting  Lamps,  and  he  ex- 
hibited on  the  occasion  fourteen  lamps  of  his  own 
construction.f  He  had  read  an  earlier  paper  on  the 
subject  on  March  24,  1806,  and  made  a  previous  pub- 
lication upon  it  in  the  Philosophical  Transactions  for 

1793-' 

On  February  24,  1812,  he  brought  before  his  class 
in  the  Institute  some  further  inquiries  concerning  Heat, 
with  a  description  of  his  calorimeter.J  He  said  he  had 
been  engaged  in  attempts  to  devise  and  construct  such 
an  instrument  for  twenty  years,  and  thought  he  had  at 
last  succeeded.  He  compares  his  own  experiments  with 
those  of  Lavoisier. 

Before  sessions  of  his  class,  on  December  30,  1811, 
and  continued  September  28  and  October  5,  1812,  he 

*  Bibliotheque  Britannique,  Vol.  XLVII.  p.  82,  etc. 

f  Bibliothfeque  Britannique,  Vol.  XLVIII. 

%  Bibliotheque  Britannique,  Vol.  LI.,  and  Nicholson's  Journal,  June,  1812. 


606  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

brought  the  results  of  series  of  experiments  on  the 
combustion  of  wood  and  charcoal,  and  on  the  heat 
developed  in  the  combustion  of  different  kinds  of 
wood.* 

There  was  read  before  the  Royal  Society,  on  January 
13,  1812,  a  paper  of  Rumford'Sj  being  An  Inquiry  con- 
cerning the  Source  of  the  Light  manifested  in  the  Com- 
bustion of  Inflammable  Bodies. 

Three  more  of  the  productions  of  Count  Rumford 
are  numbered  as  Essays  in  the  London  edition  of  his 
works.  Essay  sixteenth  is  On  the  Management  of 
Light  in  Illumination,  etc. 

Essay  seventeenth  is  On  the  Source  of  the  Light 
manifest  in  Combustion. 

Essay  eighteenth  treats  Of  the  Excellent  Qualities 
of  Coffee,  and  the  Art  of  making  it  to  Perfection. 

Sarah  says  that  her  father  resumed  for  the  most  part, 
while  she  was  with  him,  his  former  habits  of  life.  He 
took  her  with  him  on  his  occasional  visits  to  friends, 
and  was  glad  to  have  her  help  in  entertaining  the  few 
intimates  at  his  own  house.  She  took  daily  drives  with 
him  on  pleasant  days,  and  visited  all  the  interesting 
sights  and  objects  of  Paris  and  its  environs.  It  would 
appear  that  the  construction  of  the  carriage  and  the 
peculiar  garb,  yet  to  be  mentioned,  in  which  the  Count 
arrayed  himself,  to  say  nothing  of  any  quality  or  inter- 
est that  might  attach  to  the  daughter,  attracted  the 
notice  of  passers-by,  even  in  that  cosmopolitan  city. 
Sarah  says  that,  as  they  were  driving,  her  father  would 
often  go  in  to  the  meetings  of  the  Institute,  and  stay  a 
short  time,  leaving  her  in  the  carriage. 

The  few  intimate  friends  of  the  Count  to  whom  refer- 

*  Biblioth&que  Britannique,  Vol.  LII.,  and  Nicholson's  Journal,  June,  1812. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  607 

ence  has  been  made  were  themselves  conspicuous  and 
attractive  characters,  and  held  him  in  high  regard. 
Baron  Delessert,  his  banker  and  confidential  adviser, 
was  always  near  him.  As  we  shall  see,  he  performed 
some  of  the  last  offices  for  the  Count,  and  was  the  me- 
dium for  carrying  into  effect  the  provisions  of  his  last 
will,  and  for  taking  care  of  some  of  the  property  and 
transmitting  the  pension  of  his  daughter.  The  "  illustri- 
ous "  Lagrange  was  a  frequent  visitor  at  Auteuil.  The 
Senator  Leconteux  Caneleux  was  the  Count's  next  neigh- 
bor. Mr.  Underwood,  who  had  been  interested  with 
him  in  the  origin  of  the  Royal  Institution,  and  who 
remained  in  France  as  one  of  the  detenus  during  the 
war,  kept  up  his  acquaintance  with  Rumford  in  Paris, 
and  was  probably  the  writer  of  the  account  yet  to  be 
given,  which  reports  to  us  some  particulars,  found  no- 
where else,  of  his  closing  years.  Rumford  also,  grow- 
ing into  a  strongly  patriotic  feeling,  was  always  glad  to 
perform  any  kindly  service  for  Americans  visiting  Paris, 
and  he  sought  to  be  on  intimate  terms  with  such  of 
them  as  could  appreciate  his  society.  Daniel  Parker, 
Esq.,  a  native  of  America,  a  gentleman  of  high  culture, 
and  possessed  of  great  wealth,  was  one  of  these  cher- 
ished friends.  He  lived  for  forty  years  in  France.  He 
had  an  extensive,  costly,  and  luxurious  estate  at  Dra- 
veil,  about  fifteen  miles  from  Paris,  where  he  dwelt  with 
princely  elegance,  and  exercised  a  lavish  hospitality. 
His  chateau,  his  farms,  his  gardens  and  flocks,  made 
his  grounds  and  his  family  objects  of  interest,  while  he 
offered  a  welcome  to  strangers  as  well  as  to  guests,  — 
Lafayette  being  among  the  honored  visitors.  Henry 
Preble,  the  youngest  son  of  the  American  Brigadier- 
General  Preble,  with  his  wife,  an  English  lady,  and  his 


608  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

family  were  guests  of  Mr.  Parker,  and  through  him 
acquainted  with  Rumford.* 

The  Count's  Bavarian  pension  was  £1200,  which 
Bonaparte,  as  already  stated,  allowed  him  to  receive, 
with  the  privilege  of  remaining  in  France,  on  condition 
of  his  living  in  retirement  and  taking  no  part  in  public 
transactions. 

Davy  had  also  obtained  from  Bonaparte,  as  a  great 
and  especial  favor  granted  to  him  as  a  man  of  science, 
the  privilege  of  coming  into  France.  While  in  Paris, 
Davy  went  with  Underwood  to  visit  and  to  dine  with 
the  Count  at  Auteuil,  on  November  10,  1813.  Of  this 
visit,  Davy's  biographer,  Dr.  Paris,~j*  writes:  "Rum- 
ford  showed  his  laboratory  to  Davy.  This  was  exactly 
eight  months  before  the  poor,  broken-hearted  Count 
sank  into  the  grave,  the  victim  of  domestic  torment  and 
of  the  persecutions  of  the  French  savans,  instigated  by 
his  wife,  the  widow  of  the  celebrated  Lavoisier." 

That  sad  sentence  must  prepare  us  for  such  an  ac- 
count—  imperfect  as  it  is  —  as  informs  us  of  all  that  we 
know  of  the  last  days  and  of  the  death  of  Rumford. 

The  Countess  has  left  among  her  private  papers 
several  allusions  to  a  notion  or  fancy  of  her  own, 
which  she  expressed  freely  in  later  years  to  her  intimate 
friends,  to  the  effect  that  her  father  did  not  die  when  and 
where  it  was  represented  to  her  and  to  others  that  his 
life  closed.  This  fancy  of  hers,  whether  suggested  by 
any  mysterious  and  unexplained  circumstances  or  man- 
agement, or  springing  wholly  from  her  own  morbid 
imaginings,  seems  almost  to  have  brought  her  to  be- 

*  There  is  a  fine  description  of  Mr.  Parker's  estate  at  Draveil,  written  by  the  late 
Mr.  George  R.  Russell,  of  Boston,  in  the  Memoirs  of  Harriet  Preble,  copied  also  in 
the  Genealogical  Sketch  of  the  Preble  Family,  p.  287,  etc. 

f  Life  of  Davy,  p.  271. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  609 

lieve  that  her  father,  disgusted  with  the  world  and  seek- 
ing for  absolute  privacy  or  a  chance  to  wander  away 
among  strangers,  had,  with  one  or  two  sympathizing  or 
helping  confidants,  enacted  a  farce  on  this  occasion.  She 
affirmed  that  she  had  reasons  for  thinking  that  a  trick 
had  been  played  upon  his  friends  by  bringing  into  his 
house  a  corpse  to  represent  him,  and  that  this  was 
the  subject  of  the  burial  rites  supposed  to  have  been 
performed  for  Count  Rumford.  The  Countess  further 
alleged  that  Madame  de  Rumford  shared  this  opinion 
of  hers,  and  that  she  even  made,  subsequently,  three 
visits  to  England,  where  she  had  never  been  before, 
with  a  hope  of  tracing  her  late  husband.  A  reference 
to  this  fancy,  and  to  the  presumed  grounds  of  it,  can 
be  indulged  here  only  as  it  illustrates  the  vagaries  of 
human  nature,  for  it  would  seem  as  if  the  occupation 
of  mind  which  the  Countess  found  in  dwelling  upon 
this  strange  delusion  was  to  some  extent  a  relief  from 
the  brooding  sorrow  of  realizing  her  own  loneliness. 

The  Countess  had  been  for  more  than  a  year  absent 
from  Auteuil  at  the  time  of  her  father's  death.  She 
gives  a  circumstantial  account,  the  details  of  which 
would  be  unedifying  here,  of  her  occasional  encounters 
in  his  house  with  a  woman  who  was  not  a  servant,  but 
who  seemed  to  take  charge  of  the  flowers,  the  illumina- 
tions, and  the  singing  birds  of  the  dining-room.  Her 
curiosity  was  roused,  and  her  feelings  were  alternately 
excited  and  quieted  as  she  asked  one  or  another  of  the 
domestics  about  this  additional  member  of  the  family. 
At  times  she  seems  to  have  acquiesced  in  the  arrange- 
ment as  an  excusable  one,  considering  the  circumstances 
of  her  father  and  the  usages  of  the  country  where  she 
was.  At  other  times  she  felt  as  if  she  had  a  right  to 
39 


6io  Life  of  Count  Ritmford. 

interfere  and  remonstrate  so  as  to  assert  her  own  dig- 
nity. She  describes  two  stratagems,  in  which  she  had 
an  accomplice  in  one  of  the  servants,  amounting  to 
practical  jokes  played  upon  her  father,  to  let  him  know 
that  her  eyes  were  opened.  The  Countess  says  she  was 
decoyed  into  Switzerland  to  get  her  out  of  the  way, 
her  father  promising  to  join  her.  Then  she  was  sent 
on  a  visit  to  some  friends  in  Havre,  where  she  was 
informed  by  the  contents  of  a  letter  both  of  her  father's 
sickness  and  his  death.  The  woman  who  occupied  the 
porter's  lodge  of  the  mansion  at  Auteuil,  she  says, 
freely  expressed  to  her,  on  her  arrival,  a  belief  that  the 
Count  was  not  really  dead.  She  adds  that  no  human 
being  was  invited  to  the  funeral,  though  Count  Le- 
conteux  lived  within  a  stone's-throw.  She  also  reports 
as  coming  from  one  of  her  father's  most  intimate 
friends,  the  Marquis  Chansener  (?),  almost  a  daily  vis- 
itor at  Auteuil,  the  following  narrative  :  — 

"  I  went  out  one  day  to  see  the  Count.  I  was  not  myself 
very  well,  but  found  him  never  in  better  health,  running  about, 
giving  orders  to  workmen,  apparently  in  a  great  hurry,  as  if  to 
finish  something.  Being  on  the  most  intimate  terms  with  him, 
I  asked  him  if  he  expected  an  addition  to  his  family.  The 
Count  said,  c  No,  I  only  expect  to  go  away  myself.'  Two  or 
three  days  after  I  received  a  note  from  Baron  Delessert,  the 
only  confidential  friend  of  the  Count,  saying  that  he  was  indis- 
posed. I  got  into  my  carriage  to  go  and  pay  another  visit, 
when  lo  !  I  met  the  funeral  coming  into  town." 

Madame  de  Rumford  also,  it  would  seem,  was  absent 
at  the  time,  but  was  at  once  notified,  and  appeared  soon 
after  the  funeral.  She  soon  invited  the  Countess  to 
dine  with  her.  "  When  the  dessert  was  on  the  table,  and 
the  servants  had  been  sent  away,  Madame  remarked, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  611 

c  Your  father  died  young,  and  in  a  very  sudden  man- 
ner.' c  Died  !  '  replied  the  daughter,  c  I  do  not  believe 
him  to  be  dead,  any  'more  than  I  am  at  this  moment.' 
Madame  instantly  dropped  what  was  in  her  hand,  and 
retired,  desiring  the  daughter  to  do  the  same." 

The  reader  will  doubtless  observe  in  this  narrative, 
the  material  of  which  was  evidently  wrought  in  the 
broodings  of  a  morbid  imagination,  a  token  of  what 
we  call  an  eccentricity  of  character  in  the  writer  of  it. 
Sarah  Thompson  was  at  that  time  forty  years  of  age. 
The  only  near  relative  which  she  had  living  was  Paul 
Rolfe,  her  half-brother,  then  at  his  home  in  Concord, 
New  Hampshire.  Between  the  two  there  was  no  strong 
affection,  nor  was  he  worthy  of  much  regard.  The 
strange  experiences  and  vicissitudes  of  her  wandering 
life,  alternating  between  the  simple  and  uneventful  inci- 
dents of  American  country  towns  and  the  excitements 
and  enjoyments  of  three  foreign  capitals,  had,  of  course, 
their  naturally  bewildering  effect  upon  a  character  which 
of  itself  exhibited  no  substantial  qualities  of  discretion, 
vigor,  or  genius.  Her  splendid  opportunities  may  be 
regarded  as  at  least  fairly  balancing  the  infelicities  and 
misfortunes  which  shadowed  one  half  of  her  lifetime. 
She  felt  that  she  had  really  been  an  .orphan  through 
the  whole  of  her  life.  Her  father  in  his  intercourse 
with  her  was  inconstant  and  unequal ;  at  times  seem- 
ingly proud  of  her,  and  at  other  times  ashamed  of  her. 
Some  of  his  own  tastes,  habits,  and  ways  of  life  were 
reasonable  causes  of  annoyance  to  her.  It  must  be 
claimed  also  as  an  evidence  of  some  filial  consideration 
and  even  magnanimity  in  her,  that,  after  feeling  the 
irritation  naturally  consequent  upon  her  coming  to  the 
knowledge  of  certain  disagreeable  facts,  she  reconciled 


612  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

herself  to  the  conditions  which  they  compelled  her  to 
accept.  She  had  had  to  see  at  the  court  at  Munich,  and 
to  hold  playful  relations  with,  little  "  Sophy/'  a  child  of 
the  Countess  Baumgarten  by  her  father;  and,  seeing  his 
affection  evidently  divided  between  his  two  children,  she 
acceded  even  gracefully  to  the  sisterly  relation.  Sophy 
died  in  childhood ;  but  Sarah  had  her  portrait,  which 
always  hung  in  her  private  apartment  in  all  her  sub- 
sequent places  of  abode,  and  it  was  on  the  wall  of  the 
chamber  in  which  she  died.  Another  irregular  con- 
nection of  the  Count's  resulted  in  the  birth  of  an  infant, 
at  his  house  at  Auteuil,  in  the  year  of  his  own  death. 
This  infant  became  a  man  of  great  excellence  of  char- 
acter, and  as  an  officer  of  the  French  army  was  killed 
at  Sebastopol.  To  a  son  of  this  officer,  still  living  in 
Paris,  the  Countess  left  in  her  will  a  large  legacy. 

It  was  not  strange  that  the  Countess,  while  proud 
of  her  father  and  sincerely  lamenting  his  death,  —  which 
left  her  alone  among  strangers  in  a  foreign  land, 
though  by  no  means  destitute  of  friends,  —  should  also 
indulge  in  some  critical  freedom  when  speaking  of  him 
after  he  was  gone,  not  only  to  those  who  had  known 
him,  but  to  her  own  intimate  acquaintances  in  America. 
Had  she  herself  been  of  a  more^  substantial,  self-dis- 
ciplined, and  at  the  same  time  more  thoroughly  deli- 
cate and  refined  nature,  she  would  doubtless  have  had 
over  her  father  a  gentle  but  a  powerful  influence  for 
good.  The  Countess  thought  that  he  would  have  been 
a  happier  and  a  better  man  if  he  could  have  had  a  legal 
relation  with  the  excellent  and  lovely  Countess  Noga- 
rola,  whom  he  greatly  admired,  instead  of  an  illegal 
relation  with  her  sister.  The  portraits  of  both  these 
ladies  were  also  among  the  ornaments  of  Sarah's  private 


Life  of  Count  Runiford.  613 

apartments,  —  the  treasured  memorials,  in  her  later 
years,  of  scenes  over  which  time's  changes  had  sadly 
passed.  These  two  paintings,  the  work  of  an  eminent 
German  artist,  verify  the  description  and  the  delinea- 
tion of  the  greatly  diverse  characters  which  she  assigns 
to  the  two  ladies.  The  Countess  Baumgarten's  portrait 
is  not  attractive  to  eye  or  thought.  The  Countess 
Nogarola,  with  her  sweet  and  pensive  face  and  her  garb 
of  mourning,  fondly  holds  the  gaze  of  one  who  looks 
upon  the  canvas.  I  have  before  me  nearly  fifty  letters 
written  in  French  by  her  to  Sarah,  which  have  afforded 
me  entertainment  and  instruction  in  the  perusal,  though 
I  must  deny  myself  the  space  which  they  would  fill 
here. 

Returning  from  this  digression,  it  is  hardly  necessary 
to  say  that  there  was  no  ground  whatever  for  the  mor- 
bid fancy  which  the  Countess  connected  with  the  loss 
of  her  father,  nor  was  there  any  extraordinary  circum- 
stance attending  his  death.  He  was  a  lonely,  and  he 
was  not  a  happy,  man.  Having  spent  years  of  most 
thoughtful,  wise,  and  arduous  labor  for  his  fellow-men, 
and  having  advanced  the  welfare  and  comfort  and  hap- 
piness of  millions  of  his  race,  — especially  of  the  poor, 
the  abject,  and  the  forlorn  among  them,  —  he  did  not 
himself  find  serenity  of  heart,  or  satisfaction  in  society, 
or  peace  in  his  own  fragment  of  a  home.  A  fever  came 
upon  him  which,  after  a  rapid  course  of  three  days, 
ended  fatally.  We  shall  see,  in  a  subsequent  notice 
of  his  character  and  decease,  a  suggestion  that  his  death 
was  the  result  of  some  whimsical  notion  of  his  own 
about  diet  or  medicine  in  his  illness.  But  the  surmise 
was  one  that  might  naturally  be  ventured  without  any 
positive  reason  or  ground  for  it. 


6 14  Life  of  Co^lnt  Riimford. 

In  Le  Moniteur  Universe!,  Paris,  of  August  25,  1814, 
appeared  a  notice,  dated  the  24th,  of  the  Count's 
death  and  burial,  of  which  the  following  is  a  trans- 
lation :  — 

"  Monsieur  the  Count  of  Rumford,  Associate  Member  of 
the  Institute  of  France,  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  of  London, 
etc.,  etc.,  died  in  the  night  between  Sunday  and  Monday,  at 
his  country-house  at  Auteuil,  of  a  nervous  fever  [des  suites 
d'une  fievre  nerveuse].  This  celebrated  man  has  consecrated 
his  life  to  the  study  of  the  sciences,  and  always  in  the  service 
of  humanity.  He-  leaves  many  works  which  cannot  fail  to 
insure  that  his  memory  shall  be  cherished.  He  was  but  sixty 
years  of  age  [in  his  sixty-second  year].  He  was  interred  this 
morning  at  Auteuil." 

Among  the  daughter's  papers  I  have  found  a  sheet 
of  manuscript  in  French,  containing  the  "Address  pro- 
nounced over  the  grave  of  Count  Rumford  by  M.  Ben- 
jamin Delessert,  on  the  24th  of  August,  1814."  This 
also  I  translate :  — 

"  It  is  permitted  to  me,  my  friends,  as  a  member  of  the 
Administration  of  Hospitals,  to  be  the  medium  of  expressing 
our  sorrow  at  the  loss  of  the  distinguished  man  who  was  pleased 
to  honor  me  with  his  friendship.  I  leave  it  to  more  eloquent 
voices  to  speak  of  the  productions  of  his  rare  genius  ;  to  boast 
of  his  numerous  discoveries  in  the.  sciences,  and  his  ingenious 
methods  of  penetrating  to  the  secrets  of  nature  ;  to  describe 
his  theory  of  heat,  his  experiments  upon  light,  his  observa- 
tions upon  combustion,  upon  steam,  upon  gunpowder  ;  and  to 
commemorate  him  as  the  founder  of  the  Royal  Institution  of 
London. 

"  I  wish  here  and  now  only  to  recall  to  your  minds  those  of 
his  most  directly  useful  and  beneficent  works  which  have  made 
his  name  known  in  every  part  of  Europe.  Who  is  ignorant  of 
what  he  has  done  for  relieving  the  scarcity  in  food;  of  his  multi- 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  615 

plied  efforts  for  making  food  more  healthful,  more  agreeable, 
and,  above  all,  more  economical ;  what  service  he  has  rendered 
to  humanity  in  introducing  the  general  use  of  the  soups  which 
go  by  his  own  name,  and  which  have  been  so  invaluable  to  so 
many  thousands  of  persons  exposed  to  the  horrors  of  the  pre- 
vailing scarcity  ?  Who  has  not  been  made  acquainted  with  his 
effective  methods  for  suppressing  mendicity  ;  with  his  Houses 
of  Industry,  for  work  and  instruction  ;  with  his  means  for  im- 
proving the  construction  of  chimneys,  of  lamps,  of  furnaces,  of 
baths,  of  heating  by  steam  ;  and,  in  fine,  with  his  varied  under- 
takings in  the  cause  of  domestic  economy  ? 

u  In  England,  in  France,  in  Germany,  in  all  parts  of  the 
continent,  the  people  are  enjoying  the  blessings  of  his  dis- 
coveries ;  and,  from  the  humble  dwelling  of  the  poor  even  to  the 
palaces  of  sovereigns,  all  will  remember  that  his  sole  aim  was  to 
be  always  useful  to  his  fellow-men. 

u  Alas  !  death  has  snatched  him  away  in  the  midst  of  his 
labors.  Pitiless  death  has  removed  him  from  those  to  whom 
he  consecrated  his  existence.  But  his  spirit  survives  on  this 
terrestrial  orb.  His  genius,  smiling  over  us,  lifts  itself  heaven- 
ward, and  he  goes  to  take  one  of  the  high  places  prepared  for 
the  benefactors  of  humanity." 

The  Countess  has  copied  on  the  manuscript  contain- 
ing the  above  tribute  a  stanza  which,  she  says,  was 
written  by  a  noble  lady,  almost  an  octogenarian,  of  high 
spirit  and  sensibility,  to  express  her  admiring  homage 
to  Rumford.  I  copy  this  in  the  original. 

*'  Bienfaiteur  de  Thumanit^ 
Grand  sans  effort  et  sans  envie, 
II  n'a  de'ployg  son  genie 
Qiie  pour  signaler  sa  bont<£." 

Baron  Cuvier,  Perpetual  Secretary  of  the  French 
Institute,  and  a  very  intimate  friend  of  Count  Rum- 
ford,  performed  the  customary  service  by  delivering 
an  tloge  upon  the  deceased  before  his  associates,  on  the 


616  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

9th  of  January,  1815.*  This  tribute  is  introduced  by  a 
similar  commemoration  of  Mons.  A.  A.  Parmentier, 
who  had  died  less  than  a  year  before  Rumford.  The 
key-note  to  the  Eloge  is  given  in  the  opening  sentence. 
Cuvier  reminds  his  audience  that  the  sciences  had 
reached  a  point  at  which  they  excited  less  amazement 
by  the  great  enterprises  they  engage  and  the  shining 
truths  they  disclose,  than  by  the  immense  advantages 
which  their  applied  uses  daily  insure  to  society.  Hun- 
ger and  cold  are  the  two  great  foes  of  our  race,  and,  to 
meet  them,  all  our  skill  and  art  are  most  resolutely 
directed,  in  palaces  and  in  hovels.  Chemistry  has  here 
its  realm  of  power,  and  the  dispensation  of  blessings. 
Its  conquests  cost  not  a  drop  of  blood,  and  repair  the 
waste  of  all  other  conquests. 

After  an  interesting  and  eloquent  sketch  of  the  life 
and  beneficent  labors  of  M.  Parmentier,  especially  in 
the  field  of  agricultural  chemistry,  and  in  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  common  use  of  the  potato  into  France, 
Cuvier  devotes  a  more  elaborate  and  extended  treatment 
to  his  friend  Rumford.  The  errors  —  the  same  that 
are  found  in  most  of  the  biographical  sketches  —  which 
Cuvier  connects  with  the  early  years  of  his  subject, 
have  been  referred  to  on  previous  pages.  His  career 
in  Bavaria,  with  its  noble  services  and  its  high  honors, 
is  admirably  presented,  while  the  eulogist  vindicates  the 
Count  from  the  charge  of  being  dazzled  by,  or  too 
fond*of,  titles  and  distinctions.  Cuvier  does  justice  to 
Rumford's  genius  in  science,  and  traces  his  devoted  and 
eminently  successful  labors  for  ends  of  public  utility 
and  benevolence.  Especial  reference  is  then  made  to 

*  Recueil  des  Eloges  Historiques  lus  dans  les  Stances   Publiques  de  Tlnstitut  de 
France.      Par  G.  Cuvier.     Tome  deuxieme.      Paris,  1 86 1. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  617 

the  scientific  occupations  of  the  Count  after  he  had 
taken  up  his  residence  in  France.  His  various  lamps 
became  as  popular  as  were  his  fireplaces  and  soups. 
His  curious  experiments  and  information  on  agreeable 
harmonies  and  contrasts  in  colors  proved  equally  in- 
structive for  helping  ladies  about  their  ribbons  and 
apparel,  and  for  decorators  and  furnishers  of  household 
apartments. 

I  now  translate  the  words  of  the 


"  He  has  constructed  two  singularly  ingenious  instruments  of 
his  own  contrivance.  One  is  a  new  calorimeter  for  measuring 
the  amount  of  heat  produced  by  the  combustion  of  any  body. 
It  is  a  receptacle  containing  a  given  quantity  of  water,  through 
which  passes,  by  a  serpentine  tube,  the  product  of  the  combus- 
tion ;  and  the  heat  that  is  generated  is  transmitted  through  the 
water,  which,  being  raised  by  a  fixed  number  of  degrees,  serves 
as  the  basis  of  the  calculations.  The  manner  in  which  the 
exterior  heat  is  prevented  from  affecting  the  experiment  is  very 
simple  and  very  ingenious  :  he  begins  the  operation  at  a  certain 
number  of  degrees  below  this  outside  heat,  and  terminates  it 
at  the  same  number  of  degrees  above  it.  The  external  air  takes 
back  during  the  second  half  of  the  experiment  exactly  what  it 
gave  up  during  the  first.  The  other  instrument  serves  for 
noting  the  most  trifling  differences  in  the  temperature  of  bodies, 
or  in  the  rapidity  of  its  changes.  It  consists  of  two  glass  bulbs 
filled  with  air,  united  by  a  tube,  in  the  middle  of  which  is  a  bell 
of  colored  spirits  of  wine  :  the  slightest  increase  of  heat  in  one 
of  the  bulbs  drives  the  bell  towards  the  other.  This  instrument, 
which  he  called  a  thermoscope,  was  of  especial  service  in  mak- 
ing known  to  him  the  varied  and  powerful  influence  of  different 
surfaces  on  the  transmission  of  heat,  and  also  for  indicating  a 
variety  of  methods  for  retarding  or  hastening  at  will  the  pro- 
cesses of  heating  and  freezing. 

"  The  last  two  classes  of  researches,  and  those  which  relate 
to  illumination,  ought  more  especially  to  interest  us  [the  mem- 
bers of  the  Institute],  because  they  were  made  after  Rumford 


618  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

had  established  himself  in  Paris,  and  took  an  active  part  in  our 
occupations.  He  regarded  them  as  his  contributions  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Institute. 

"These  are  the  principal  scientific  achievements  of  M. 
Rumford,  but  they  are  by  no  means  all  the  services  which  he 
has  rendered  to  the  sciences.  He  knew  that  in  discoveries,  as 
in  good  deeds,  the  work  of  a  man  is  transient  and  limited,  and 
that  in  both  of  these  directions  it  is  necessary  to  propose  and 
foster  durable  institutions.  So  he  has  founded  two  prizes,  which 
are  to  be  annually  assigned  by  the  Royal  Society  of  London 
and  by  the  Philosophical  Society  of  Philadelphia  [Cuvier's  mis- 
take], for  the  most  important  experiments  of  which  light  and 
heat  shall  be  the  objects,  —  a  foundation  in  which,  while  exhibit- 
ing his  passion  as  a  physicist,  he  testified  also  his  regard  for  his 
native  and  for  his  adopted  country,  and  proved  that,  in  having 
served  the  latter,  he  had  no  ill  feeling  against  the  former. 

"  He  was  the  principal  founder  of  the  Royal  Institution  of 
London,  one  of  those  establishments  best  adapted  to  advance  the 
progress  of  the  sciences  and  their  applications  to  public  utility. 
In  a  country  in  which  each  individual  glories  in  encouraging 
anything  which  benefits  a  large  number,  the  mere  distribution 
of  his  prospectus  procured  him  considerable  funds,  and  his  own 
active  efforts  secured  his  object.  The  prospectus  itself  was  a 
sort  of  description  of  the  result,  for  it  spoke  of  an  enterprise 
already  in  great  part  realized.  A  large  edifice  exhibited  all  sorts 
of  models  and  machines  in  working  order  \  he  gathered  there  a 
library,  and  he  constructed  a  fine  amphitheatre  where  courses  of 
lectures  are  given  on  chemistry,  on  mechanics,  and  on  political 
economy.  Light  and  heat,  the  two  favorite  studies  of  Count 
Rumford,  and  the  mysteries  wrought  by  combustion  which 
these  subject  to  the  service  of  men,  ought  to  be  there  con- 
stantly under  examination.  This  establishment  was  the  work 
of  only  five  months,  which  Rumford  had  passed  in  England 
without  a  purpose  of  remaining  there." 

Cuvier  then  refers  to  the  Count's  military  services  in 
Bavaria  in  the  campaign  of  1796,  to  his  appointment 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  619 

and  rejection  as  ambassador,  to  the  death  of  his  friend 
the  Elector,  and  to  the  circumstances,  already  related, 
which  induced  Rumford  to  withdraw  from  Bavaria. 
The  eulogist  proceeds  :  — 

"  The  time  at  last  arrived  when  a  decisive  retreat  became 
almost  a  necessity  to  him  ;  and  it  was  no  slight  honor  for 
France  that  a  man  who  was  held  in  such  consideration  in  the 
most  civilized  countries  of  two  worlds  should  prefer  this  for  a 
final  sojourn.  It  was  because  he  had  promptly  apprehended 
that  this  is  the  country  where  full  celebrity  is  most  surely 
awarded  to  whatever  is  worthy  of  true  distinction,  indepen- 
dently of  the  transient  favor  of  courts  and  all  the  freaks  of 
fortune. 

"  We  have  seen  him  here,  in  fact,  for  ten  years  honored  by 
Frenchmen  and  foreigners,  held  in  high  regard  by  the  lovers  of 
science,  sharing  their  labors,  aiding  with  his  advice  the  humblest 
artisans,  and  nobly  serving  the  public  by  a  constant  succession 
of  useful  inventions.  Nothing  would  have  been  lacking  to  the 
perfect  enjoyment  of  his  life,  if  the  amenity  of  his  manners  had 
equalled  his  ardor  in  promoting  the  public  welfare. 

"  But  it  must  be  confessed  that  he  exhibited  in  conversation  and 
intercourse,  and  in  all  his  demeanor,  a  feeling  which  would  seem 
most  extraordinary  in  a  man  who  was  always  so  well  treated  by 
others,  and  who  had  himself  done  so  much  good  to  others.  It 
was  as  if  while  he  had  been  rendering  all  these  services  to  his 
fellow-men  he  had  no  real  love  or  regard  for  them.  It  would 
appear  as  if  the  vile  passions  which  he  had  observed  in  the 
miserable  objects  committed  to  his  care,  or  those  other  passions, 
not  less  vile,  which  his  success  and  fame  had  excited  among  his 
rivals,  had  imbittered  him  towards  human  nature.  So  he  thought 
it  was  not  wise  or  good  to  intrust  to  men  in  the  mass  the  care 
of  their  own  well-being.  The  right,  which  seems  So  natural 
to  them,  of  judging  whether  they  are  wisely  governed,  appeared 
to  him  to  be  a  fictitious  fancy  born  of  false  notions  of  en- 
enlightenment.  His  views  of  slavery  were  nearly  the  same  as 
those  of  a  plantation-owner.  He  regarded  the  government  of 


62O  Life  of  Coiint  Rumford. 

China  as  coming  nearest  to  perfection,  because  in  giving  over 
the  people  to  the  absolute  control  of  their  only  intelligent  men, 
and  in  lifting  each  of  those  who  belonged  to  this  hierarchy  on 
the  scale  according  to  the  degree  of  his  intelligence,  it  made,  so 
to  speak,  so  many  millions  of  arms  the  passive  organs  of  the 
will  of  a  few  sound  heads,  —  a  notion  which  I  state  without 
pretending  in  the  slightest  degree  to  approve  it,  and  which,  as 
we  know,  would  be  poorly  calculated  to  find  prevalence  among 
European  nations. 

"  M.  de  Rumford  had  cause  for  learning  by  his  own  experi- 
ence that  it  is  not  so  easy  in  the  West  as  it  is  in  China  to  induce 
other  people  to  consent  to  be  only  arms  ;  and  that  no  one  is  so 
well  prepared  to  turn  these  arms  of  others  to  his  own  service  as 
is  one  who  has  reduced  them  in  subjection  to  himself.  An 
empire  such  as  he  conceived  would  not  have  been  more  difficult 
for  him  to  manage  than  were  his  barracks  and  poorhouses. 
He  relied  wholly  on  the  principle  of  rigid  system  and  order. 
He  called  order  the  necessary  auxiliary  of  genius,  the  only 
possible  instrument  for  securing  any  substantial  good,  and,  in 
fact,  almost  a  subordinate  deity,  for  the  government  of  this 
lower  world.  He  intended  to  make  Order  the  subject  of  a  book 
which  he  thought  would  be  the  most  important  of  all  that  he 
had  written  ;  but  we  find  among  his  papers  only  imperfect  parts 
of  it.  As  for  himself,  he  was  in  his  own  person,  at  all  points 
and  in  all  imaginable  respects,  the  model  of  order.  His  wants, 
his  pleasures,  his  toils,  were  as  exactly  arranged  as  were  his 
experiments.  He  drank  nothing  but  water;  he  ate  only  broiled 
or  roast  meat,  because  boiled  meats  yielded  a  less  amount  of 
aliment.  He  indulged  himself  in  no  superfluity,  not  even  in  a 
step  or  a  word,  and  it  was  in  the  strictest  sense  that  he  used  the 
word  superfluity. 

"  This  was  without  doubt  a  means  of  helping  him  to  devote 
all  his  energies  most  directly  to  good  works  ;  but  it  was  not  a 
method  likely  to  make  him  agreeable  in  the  society  of  his  equals. 
Society  likes  a  little  more  abandon.  And  so  it  happens  that  a 
certain  hauteur  of  perfection  seems  often  a  defect,  when  as 
great  efforts  are  not  made  to  dissemble  it  as  to  exercise  it. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  621 

"  As  for  the  rest,  whatever  were  the  sentiments  of  M. 
Rumford  for  men,  they  in  no  way  lessened  his  reverence  for 
God.  He  never  omitted  any  opportunity,  in  his  works,  of  ex- 
pressing his  religious  admiration  of  Providence,  and  of  proposing 
for  that  admiration  by  others  the  innumerable  and  varied  pro- 
visions which  are  made  for  the  preservation  of  all  creatures  ; 
indeed,  even  his  political  views  came  from  his  firm  persuasion 
that  princes  ought  to  imitate  Providence  in  this  respect  by 
taking  charge  of  us  without  being  amenable  to  us. 

ct  This  rigorous  observance  of  order,  which  probably  was 
prejudicial  to  the  comfort  of  his  life,  certainly  did  not  con- 
tribute to  prolong  it.  A  sudden  and  violent  fever  removed 
him  from  us  in  his  full  vigor,  at  the  age  of  sixty-one.  He  died 
on  the  2ist  of  August,  1814,  in  his  country-house  at  Auteuil, 
where  he  was  passing  the  summer. 

"  The  news  of  his  obsequies  reached  us  at  the  same  time  with 
that  of  his  sickness,  so  as  not  to  allow  his  associates  to  offer  at 
his  burial  the  accustomed  tribute.  But  if  such  honors  and  such 
efforts  to  extend  fame  and  to  make  it  lasting  are  ever  needless, 
they  are  so  for  a  man  who,  by  the  happy  choice  of  the  subjects 
of  his  labors,  has  known  how  to  secure  to  himself  alike  the 
esteem  of  the  wise  and  the  remembrance  of  the  unfortunate." 

It  is  observable  that  Cuvier,  though  he  was  the  inti- 
mate and  confidential  friend  of  both  parties,  makes  no 
allusion  to  the  unhappy  relations  between  Count  Rum- 
ford  and  his  wife.  The  reflection  which  he  casts  upon 
the  Count's  ungracious  manners  does  but  balance  the 
similar  allowance  which  Guizot  admitted  on  the  part  of 
Madame  Lavoisier. 

The  newspapers,  journals,  and  magazines  of  Eng- 
land made  the  usual  recognition  in  their  obituaries  of 
Count  Rumford's  decease,  and  paid  him,  on  the  whole, 
just  tributes  for  the  benevolent  services  and  the  scien- 
tific discoveries  which  had  divided  between  them  his 
thirty-eight  years  of  life  in  Europe.  In  the  Monthly 


622  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Magazine,  or  British  Register  (London),  for  Septem- 
ber, 1814,  appeared  the  following:  — 

"At  his  seat  near  Paris,  60,  died,  August  21,  that 
illustrious  philosopher,  Benjamin  Thompson,  Count 
Rumford,  F.  R.  S.,  Member  of  the  Institute,  &c.,  an 
American  by  birth,  but  the  friend  of  man,  and  an  honor 
to  the  whole  human  race." 

The  editors  promised  a  memoir  of  the  Count  in  their 
pages,  and  redeemed  the  promise  by- publishing,  in  the 
number  for  May,  1815  (p.  328,  etc.),  a  translation 
of  a  large  part  of  Cuvier's  Eloge.  In  connection  with 
Cuvier's  reference  to  the  Count's  agency  in  establishing 
the  Royal  Institution,  the  editors  introduce  in  a  note  a 
very  sharp  allusion  to  the  variance  alleged  to  have  been 
excited  by  him  among  his  associates  there.  The  terms 
of  the  censure  are  somewhat  severe  as  directed  against 
one  pronounced  in  the  same  pages  to  be  "an  honor  to 
the  whole  human  race/'  "We  feel  it  proper  to  state, 
that  the  Count  assumed- the  character  of  absolute  con- 
troller, as  well  as  projector,  of  this  establishment,  and 
conducted  himself  with  a  degree  of  hauteur  which  dis- 
gusted its  patrons,  and  almost  broke  the  heart  of  our 
amiable  friend  and  its  first  professor,  Dr.  Garnett." 

The  other  contemporary  references  and  obituary  no- 
tices which  I  have  seen  were,  however  brief,  eulogistic, 
and  not  qualified  by  any  abating  terms. 

The  Gentleman's  Magazine  (London),  in  the  number 
for  September,  1814,  announced  Count  Rumford's 
death,  and  promised  some  memoirs  of  him  in  its  next 
number.  Accordingly  the  promised  communication 
appeared  in  October.*  I  suppose  the  original  part  of 

*  The    Gentleman's    Magazine  and  Historical  Chronicle,  Vol.    LXXXIV.,  Part 
Second,  p.  394.     London,  1814. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  623 

the  sketch  there  given  to  be  from  the  pen  of  Mr. 
Underwood,  previously  mentioned  as  an  intimate  friend 
of  Rumford.  It  contains  some  very  interesting  par- 
ticulars, which,  as  coming  from  one  who  evidently  was 
in  close  relations  with  the  Count  during  his  last  years, 
have  a  character  of  authenticity.  The  portion  of  this 
memoir  which  is  biographical,  and  relates  to  Rumford's 
life  before  his  residence  in  France,  is  credited,  "with 
slight  alterations,  to  a  contemporary  publication."  The 
source  of  it  would  seem  to  be  Pictet's  contribution  to 
the  Bibliotheque  Britannique,  as  it  repeats  his  errors, 
though  it  adds  some  new  ones,  —  as,  for  instance,  in 
the  statement  that  "  Rumford  lost  his  wife  before  he 
quitted  America."  We  are  glad,  therefore,  to  have 
the  editor's  voucher  when  he  adds  :  "  We  subjoin  some 
interesting  memorials  of  his  character  and  pursuits, 
communicated  by  an  intimate  friend  of  the  Count's, 
resident  in  Paris."  I  extract  largely  from  these. 

"  In  the  summer  of  1803  he  made  a  tour  of  a  part  of  Switzer- 
land and  Bavaria  with  the  widow  of  the  celebrated  Lavoisier,  a 
woman  of  highly  cultivated  mind  and  capacious  understanding, 
whom  shortly  after  their  return  to  Paris  he  married.  She 
possesses  a  portrait  of  Count  Rumford,  which  was  painted  by 
Girodeu,  the  best  painter  in  France,  in  1802.  But  their  union 
proved  unhappy,  and  they  at  length  separated,  —  the  Count 
retiring  to  a  house  at  Auteuil,  about  four  miles  from  Paris 
(formerly  the  residence  of  the  celebrated  Helvetius,  and  after- 
wards of  the  physician  Cabanis),  where  he  passed  the  rest  of  his 
days  in  philosophical  pursuits  and  experiments,  almost  secluded 
from  the  world.  For  after  the  death  of  his  worthy  friend,  the 
illustrious  Lagrange,  he  saw  only  his  next-door  neighbor,  the 
Senator  Leconteux  Caneleux  ;  Mr.  Underwood,  a  member  of 
the  Royal  Institution,  who  assisted  him  in  the  experiments  ;  and 
an  old  friend,  Mr.  Parker,  a  learned  American,  who  possesses  a 


624  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

splendid  mansion  in  Paris,  and  a  very  fine  landed  estate  and 
agricultural  establishment  in  its  environs.  He  ceased  to  attend 
the  sittings  of  the  National  Institute ;  but  for  the  Perpetual 
Secretary,  Cuvier,  a  man  as  morally  estimable  as  his  talents  are 
superior  to  his  French  fellow-members,  he  always  preserved  the 
highest  admiration  and  esteem. 

u  One  object  of  his  later  occupations  was  a  work — not  yet 
finished,  though  it  has  been  constantly  going  on  for  more  than 
twenty  years  —  On  the  Nature  and  Effects  of  Order,  which, 
had  he  been  spared  to  finish  it,  would  probably  have  been  one 
of  the  most  valuable  presents  ever  made  to  domestic  society. 
No  man  in  all  his  habits  had  more  the  spirit  of  order  ;  every- 
thing was  classed-;  no  object  was  ever  allowed  to  remain  an 
instant  out  of  its  place  the  moment  he  had  done  with  it,  and 
he  was  never  behind  his  time  in  an  appointment  a  single  in- 
stant. 

"  He  was  also  latterly  employed  on  a  series  of  experiments  on 
the  propagation  of  heat  in  solids.  He  had  by  him  several 
unpublished  works,  particularly  one  of  considerable  interest  on 
Meteorolites,  in  which  he  demonstrated  that  they  came  from 
regions  beyond  the  atmosphere  of  the  earth.  He  has  left  several 
memoirs  in  French  (of  which  he  had  a  few  copies  printed  for 
the  use  of  his  friends)  on  the  quantity  of  heat  obtained  by  the 
combustion  of  various  substances  and  the  relative  quantity  of 
light  from  others,  with  a  description  of  different  improvements 
in  the  construction  of  lamps,  which  he  had  the  satisfaction  of 
seeing  very  generally  adopted  in  Paris.  His  admirable  paper 
On  the  Advantages  of  Broad  Wheels  to  Carriages  is  well 
known.  He  put  this  in  practice  in  his  own  chariot ;  but,  though 
there  could  be  no  doubt  of  their  advantages,  they  were  not  used 
by  others,  the  Count's  being  the  only  carriage  in  Paris  that  had 
them.  Nor  did  any  one  follow  (which  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at)  his  whimsical  winter  dress,  which  was  entirely  white,  even 
his  hat.  This  he  adopted  agreeably  to  the  law  of  nature,  that 
more  heated  rays  are  thrown  from  a  dark  body  than  from  a 
light  one.  I  do  not  know  whether  his  very  simple,  and  I  may 
add  perfect,  calorimeter  is  known  in  England.  The  apparatus 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  625 

with  which  he  was  making  a  series  of  experiments  on  the  rela- 
tive conducting  powers  of  different  solid  bodies,  for  heat,  and 
which  death  prevented  his  completing,  is  of  the  greatest  beauty. 
It  consists  of  a  cylindrical  vessel  of  cork  (which  is  a  perfect 
non-conductor  of  heat),  in  the  centre  of  the  bottom  of  which  the 
small  solid  cylinder  of  the  substance  to  be  experimented  upon 
is  fitted  into  an  aperture  of  exactly  the  same  diameter  as  the 
cylindrical  vessel,  which  is  then  filled  with  water,  and  heat 
from  the  flame  of  a  spirit-lamp  is  applied  to  the  lower  extremity 
of  the  substance  ;  the  time  the  heat  takes  to  pass  through  and 
raise  the  temperature  of  the  water  indicates  the  relative  con- 
ducting powers  of  the  different  substances  through  which  it  is 
made  to  pass.  He  has  repeatedly  declared  to  me  it  was  his 
decided  opinion  that  heat  and  light  were  the  result  of  vibrations 
in  bodies,  and  were  not  bodies  themselves.  He  had  lately 
brought  to  the  greatest  perfection  a  lamp  for  burning  spirits  of 
wine,  and  by  which  all  explosion  was  rendered  impossible. 
This  in  France  is  of  the  greatest  convenience,  where,  from  the 
low  price  of  alcohol,  it  is  nearly  as  economical  as  any  other  fuel 
for  heating  water. 

"  The  Count  met  with  considerable  plague  in  his  pursuits 
from  the  malignant  disposition  and  jealousies  of  his  fellow- 
members  of  the  National  Institute,  in  consequence  of  having 
differed  in  opinion  on  capillary  attraction  from  their  despotic 
leader,  Laplace.  He  often  used  to  exclaim  that  no  one  who  had 
not  lived  a  considerable  time  in  France  could  imagine  how  con- 
temptible a  nation  they  are,  and  how  void  of  honor  and  even 
honesty.  Whenever  he  ordered  any  instrument  at  a  mathe- 
matical instrument-maker's,  a  similar  one  was  instantly  made 
for  some  one  of  the  Great  Nation,  though  of  the  intended  use 
they  were  at  the  moment  ignorant ;  but  the  hope  of  supplanting 
a  foreigner  and  of  arrogating  to  themselves  a  discovery  (a  com- 
mon practice  with  them)  incited  them  to  adopt  this  dishonorable 
practice.  This  forced  him  to  send  for  a  workman  from  Ger- 
many, whom  he  constantly  employed,  and  who  lived  in  his 
house.  I  was  one  day  with  the  Count  at  a  sitting  of  the  first 
class  of  the  Institute,  when  we  heard  one  of  the  leading  mem- 
40 


626  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

bers  declare  that  they  would  set  their  faces  against  any  discovery 
which  did  not  originate  among  themselves. 

"  The  Count  displayed  extraordinarily  spirited  conduct  and 
firmness  in  refusing  the  French  the  passage  of  the  city  of 
Munich.  He  used  often  to  dwell  with  much  pleasure  on  hav- 
ing been  the  means  of  bringing  forward  two  celebrated  char- 
acters, the  Bavarian  general  Wreden  and  Sir  Humphry  Davy, — 
the  former  originally  a  lawyer,  or  a  land  steward,  and  possessing 
great  military  dispositions  j  Count  Rumford,  then  Minister  of 
War  to  the  Elector  of  Bavaria,  gave  him  a  commission :  and  the 
latter  was  recommended  to  him  when  he  had  the  direction  of 
the  Royal  Institution,  by  Mr.  Underwood,  and  was  made  lec- 
turer on  Chemistry. 

"  The  climate  of  France  agreeing  with  him  far  better  than 
that  of  Bavaria,  he  received  permission  of  the  King  of  Bavaria 
to  reside  there  ;  and  his  half-pay  as  lieutenant-general  in  his 
service,  and  pension  of  retreat  as  minister  of  his  late  father 
[uncle],  were  regularly  paid  him,  amounting  to  about  twelve 
hundred  pounds  sterling  per  annum.  It  was  this  which  pre- 
vented his  return  to  England,  as  Bonaparte  would  not,  in  that 
case,  have  allowed  his  vassal,  the  King  of  Bavaria,  to  have 
paid  the  Count. 

"  When  Bavaria  joined  in  the  coalition  for  the  emancipation 
of  Europe,  it  was  agitated  in  Bonaparte's  council  to  send  the 
Count  away.  However,  as  it  was  proved  that  he  scarcely  ever 
stirred  out  of  his  house,  he  was  allowed  to  remain. 

"  The  German,  French,  Spanish,  and  Italian  languages  were  as 
familiar  to  the  Count  as  the  English,  both  in  speaking  and  writ- 
ing. His  only  recreations  were  playing  at  billiards  against  him- 
self for  want  of  one  to  play  with,  and  walking  in  his  garden,  of 
which  he  was  very  fond,  though  ignorant  of  botany,  and  even 
of  the  common  names  of  the  commonest  plants.  He  was  very 
fond  of  chess,  at  which  he  played  well,  but  rarely  enjoyed  this 
pleasure,  as  he  said  that  after  a  few  minutes'  play  his  feet  be- 
came like  ice  and  his  head  like  fire.  He  drew  with  great  skill 
the  designs  of  his  own  inventions,  but  of  painting  and  sculpture 
he  had  no  knowledge  and  little  feeling ;  nor  had  he  any  taste 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  627 

for  poetry.     He  had,  however,  great  taste  for  landscape-garden- 
ing- 

"  His  habits  of  life  were  latterly  most  abstemious,  so  much 
so  that  he  had  not  sufficient  vital  strength  to  resist  a  nervous 
fever,  which  carried  him  off  on  the  2ist  of  August,  when  he 
was  on  the  eve  of  returning  to  England,  to  which,  as  long  as  he 
lived,  he  retained  the  most  devoted  attachment." 

The  French  savans,  with  the  brilliant  exception  of 
Cuvier,  have  not  been  lavish  in  their  encomiums  on 
Count  Rumford.  Those  of  his  associates  in  the  Insti- 
tute who  had  read  the  severe  reflections  cast  upon  them 
in  some  of  the  sentences  of  the  above  memoir  might 
be  released  from  any  obligation  to  swell  his  praise, 
especially  if,  as  there  is  reason  to  believe,  Count  Rum- 
ford  had  treated  them  in  a  manner  conformed  to  his 
opinion  of  them.  I  do  not  know  who  was  the  writer 
of  the  following  complimentary  tribute  to  Rumford, 
which  appeared  in  a  periodical  in  Paris,  just  before  his 
death  :  "His  conversation  is  animated,  interesting,  and 
solid :  it  is  that  of  a  man  who  has  seen  very  much, 
and  who  has  cast  an  observing  eye  upon  everything. 
He  devotes  himself  to  doing  good  to  his  fellow-men, 
and  cares  but  little  for  their  gratitude.  He  gratifies  his 
own  fancies,  and  is  not  indifferent  to  fame." 

Dr.  Thomas  Young,  already  mentioned  in  another 
connection  with  Count  Rumford,  was  among  those  who 
paid  to  him  a  qualified  tribute  after  his  death.  In  his 
Miscellaneous  Works,  edited  by  Dr.  Peacock,  we  find 
from  his  pen  a  series  of  cc  Biographies  of  Men  of  Sci- 
ence," Rumford  being  included  among  them.f  The 

*  "  Sa  conversation  est  animee,  interessante,  substantielle  :  c'est  elle  d'un  homme 
qui  a  beaucoup  vu  et  qui  a  port^  sur  chaque  chose  un  ceil  d'observateur.  II  s'occupe 
du  bien  des  hommes  et  compte  peu  sur  leur  reconnaissance.  II  suit  son  gout  et  n'est 
pas  indifferent  a  la  gloire."  —  La  Decade  Philosophique,  Litt^raire,  et  Politique,  No.  XX. 

f  Vol.  II.  pp.  474-484.     London,  1855. 


628  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

errors  common  to  most  of  the  memoirs  of  the  Count 
appear  in  this  sketch ;  but  Dr.  Young,  when  writing 
as  from  his  personal  observation,  in  reference  to  Rum- 
ford's  leaving  England,  says  :  — 

"  After  so  active  and  diversified  a  career,  it  was  not  to  be 
expected  that  he  would  be  satisfied  with  the  monotony  of  a  per- 
manent residence  in  London.  He  was  so  accustomed  to  labor 
for  the  attainment  of  some  object,  that  when  the  object  itself 
was  completely  within  his  reach,  and  the  labor  was  ended,  the 
prospect,  which  ought  to  have  been  uniformly  bright,  became 
spontaneously  clouded,  or  even  the  serenity  became  unenjoyable 
for  want  of  some  clouds  to  afford  a  contrast. 

"The  enthusiasm  excited  by  the  novelty  of  some  of  his  in- 
ventions had  subsided,  and  he  was  even  mortified  by  becoming, 
in  common  with  the  most  elevated  personages  of  the  country, 
the  object  of  the  impertinent  attacks  of  a  popular  satirist 
[Cobbett]." 

Dr.  Young  says  that  though  the  Count  had  devoted 
such  skill  and  pains  to  the  arrangement  of  his  house  at 
Brompton,  he  was  never  known  to  give  a  single  enter- 
tainment in  it.  He  also  mentions  the  Count's  appear- 
ance in  his  broad-wheeled  carriage,  with  his  white  hat 
and  clothing,  and  adds :  "  These  peculiarities  and  a 
peremptory,  unyielding  disposition  were  the  causes 
that  set  him  apart  from  social  intercourse,  and  in  all  his 
connections  in  life  seem  to  have  rendered  him  less  the 
object  of  personal  attachment  than  of  esteem  for  his 
talents  and  activity.  He  was  mild  in  his  manners  and 
tone  of  voice,  but  authoritative  and  dictatorial  in  spirit." 

The  same  writer  tells  us  that  Rumford's  abstemious- 
ness and  temperance  were  the  regimen  prescribed  by  his 
medical  advisers,  and  were  not  of  his  own  preference. 

Thomas  Thomson,  M.  D.,  F.  R.  S.,  etc.,  editor  of 
the  "  Annals  of  Philosophy,"  a  monthly  magazine, 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  629 

wrote  and  published  in  the  number  of  his  own  Journal 
for  April,  1815,  cc  A  Biographical  Account  of  Sir  Ben- 
jamin Thompson,  Knt.,  Count  Rumford.'*  This  ac- 
count contains  several  errors,  and  besides  exhibits  some 
tokens  of  ill-nature  and  personal  jealousy.  Speaking 
of  Rumford's  zeal  and  schemes  for  the  public  relief  in 
the  two  years  of  scarcity,  1799  and  1800,  Dr.  Thom- 
son says  :  — 

"  Such  was  his  popularity  at  that  time,  that  numbers  of  peo- 
ple adopted  his  ideas,  and  fitted  up  their  kitchens  according  to 
his  models  ;  but  I  have  not  heard  that  his  scheme  was  found  to 
answer  in  a  single  instance.  I  remember  going  in  1802  to  see 
the  Count's  own  kitchen,  which  was  fitted  up  according  to  his 
own  plan.  I  was  very  much  surprised  to  observe  that  not  one 
of  the  utensils  had  ever  been  put  to  use.  Hence  it  was  likely 
that  his  notions  of  cooking  were  rather  theoretical  than  practical. 
....  The  uncommon  popularity  which  the  Count  enjoyed  for 
some  years  seems  to  have  produced  a  bad  effect  upon  his  dis- 
position, or  perhaps  rather  induced  him  to  display  without  re- 
serve those  dispositions  which  he  had  hitherto  been  at  some 
pains  to  conceal.  Pomposity,  and  a  species  of  literary  arro- 
gance quite  unsuitable  to  the  nature  of  experimental  philosophy, 
for  some  years  characterized  his  writings  and  injured  their 
value.  But  in  some  of  the  last  Essays  with  which  he  favored 
the  world  we  find  much  valuable  and  curious  information 
respecting  the  heat  evolved  by  different  combustibles  while 
burning,  —  a  subject  of  great  interest,  which  he  prosecuted  for 
many  years,  and  at  last  elucidated  with  considerable  success. 

u  I  pass  over  his  quarrel  with  the  managers  of  the  Royal 
Institution,  about  the  nature  of  which  I  am  not  fully  informed, 
though  I  suppose  it  was  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  Count  to 
retain  in  his  own  hands  the  entire  management  of  that  Institu- 
tion. Be  that  as  it  may,  the  result  of  the  dispute  induced  him 
to  leave  London,  to  which  he  never  again  returned." 

In  the  sketch  which  Dr.   Thomson    proceeds  to  give 


630  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

of  the  scientific  writings  and  experiments  of  Count 
Rumford,  he  connects  with  each  of  them  some  abate- 
ment of  the  consideration  due  him,  or  some  depreci- 
atory remark.  He  says  that  the  Count's  conclusion 
"  that  heat  is  not  a  substance,  but  mere  motion,"  "  is 
going  rather  farther  than  the  experiments  warrant. 
There  is  nothing  absurd  in  supposing  that  friction  has 
the  property  of  drawing  heat  continually  from  the  sur- 
rounding bodies,  just  as  it  does  electricity,  though  it 
is  not  in  our  power  to  explain  how  it  produces  this 
effect." 

After  this  specimen  of  Dr.  Thomson's  scientific 
appreciation,  we  are  hardly  surprised  at  reading  the 
following  sentences  :  — 

"The  seventh  Essay,  in  which  the  Count  endeavored  to 
prove  that  fluids  are  non-conductors  of  heat,  has  been  suffi- 
ciently refuted  by  the  more  decisive  experiments  of  subsequent 
chemists.  Indeed,  the  Count  himself,  though  abundantly  obsti- 
nate, appears  at  last  to  have  given  up  his  opinion. 

"The  publication  of  Mr.  Leslie's  book  on  Heat,  in  which  this 
subject  is  treated  of  at  much  greater  length  and  much  more 
completely,  has  deprived  his  inquiry  concerning  the  nature  of 
heat  and  the  modes  of  its  communication  [in  Philosophical 
Transactions  for  1804]  of  most  of  its  interest."* 

Of  all  those  who  personally  knew  Count  Rumford, 
his  early  friend  and  life-long  admirer,  Colonel  Baldwin, 
w'ould  doubtless  have  been  his  wisest  and  most  consid- 
erate biographer.  The  Count  was  in  manhood  pre- 
cisely what  he  had  been  in  youth,  with  the  development 
of  nature  and  the  field  of  opportunities  to  call  out  his 
real  self.  But  this  friend,  who  was  not  spared  to  write 
about  his  playmate  and  school-fellow  after  his  eventful 
and  eminent  career  had  closed,  had  already  published 

*  Annals  of  Philosophy,  Vol.  V.  pp.  241-250.     London,  1815. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  631 

about  him  some  kindly  and  discriminating  judgments, 
which  may  not  inappropriately  be  quoted  here. 

Colonel  Baldwin,  writing  of  his  friend  after  he  had 
become  distinguished  in  Europe,  and  while  he  was  still 
living,  said,  reverting  to  his  own  acquaintance  with 
the  young  Benjamin  Thompson  :  — 

"  The  pleasant  and  happy  days  which  he  passed  at  Concord 
were  insufficient  to  lull  his  natural  passion  to  engage  in  the 
active  scenes  of  useful  life.  Although  he  enjoyed  as  much  as 
any  man  the  amusements  of  a  country  town  ;  although  he  was 
susceptible  of  the  comforts  of  retirement  and  a  peaceful  fireside; 
and  although  with  his  wife,  who  was  affectionately  attached  to 
him,  he  might  live  as  an  honorable  and  independent  gentleman, 
he  laudably  resolved  not  to  sacrifice  his  bright  talents  to  the  mo- 
notonous occupations  of  domestic  life.  The  world  had  higher 
charms  for  him,  which  led  him  to  relinquish  the  idea  of  enjoy- 
ing them.  This  ambition  was  not  at  all  to  engage  in  brilliant 
scenes  of  dissipation,  but  to  rise  in  the  estimation  of  mankind 
by  his  usefulness,  and  call  forth  that  applause  which  springs 
from  public  love. 

"  Mr.  Thompson  was,  perhaps,  for  so  young  a  man,  too 
much  attached  to  greatness  and  splendor  ;  and  with  a  genius 
which  never  suffered  him  to  stop  short  of  the  object  of  his 
pursuit,  and  with  a  mind  susceptible  to  impressions  from  every 
quarter,  he  could  not  fix  his  attention,  according  to  the  cool 
dictates  of  common  prudence,  upon  any  uniform  line  of  conduct. 
From  this  cause  alone,  a  want  of  regularity  in  his  behavior,  im- 
pressions unfavorable  to  his  character  as  a  patriot  were  made  upon 
the  minds  of  his  acquaintance  at  Concord.  The  Whig  party, 
as  it  was  then  called,  in  the  midst  of  their  zeal  for  the  American 
cause,  were  too  apt  to  construe  indifference  into  a  determined 
attachment  to  the  British  interest,  and  therefore  we  need  not 
wonder  that  Major  Thompson  had  enemies,  as  indeed  he  had 
many.  These  suspicions  were  at  first  cautiously  concealed, 
but  finally  burst  upon  his  peaceful  retirement,  and  imbittered 
his  domestic  happiness." 


632  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Colonel  Baldwin,  after  relating  the  circumstances 
which  induced  his  young  friend  to  take  refuge  with  his 
mother  in  Woburn,  and  giving  the  account,  repeated  in 
an  earlier  page,  of  his  trial  and  acquittal,  proceeds  to 
offer  such  a  plea  for  him  that  we  ought  to  allow  to  him 
its  benefit :  — 

"  Supposing  that  from  the  probable  effect  his  past  conduct 
had  produced  upon  those  who  would  make  appointments,  he 
should  never  be  able  to  participate  in  the  exquisite  enjoyments 
of  patriotism  struggling  with  oppression,  and  when  it  was  un- 
certain on  which  side  victory  would  remain,  he  left  the  Ameri- 
cans to  seek  that  patronage  and  shelter  in  another  country 
which  were  refused  him  here.  This  step  he  made  for  pursuits 
very  different  from  those  which  have  been  imputed  to  him. 

u  From  this  general  view  of  the  conduct  of  Major  Thompson 
and  his  manner  of  leaving  America,  some  may  have  received 
unfavorable  impressions  of  his  character.  But  he  had  never 
made  politics  his  study,  and  never,  perhaps  seriously  considered 
.the  origin  and  progress  of  the  contest ;  and  if  he  had  sought 
for  employment  against  his  countrymen,  he  had  sufficient  oppor- 
tunities of  being  gratified.  But  he  wished  not  to  build  his  fame 
upon  his  exploits  and  dexterity  in  warlike  achievements.  He 
wished  not  to  sacrifice  his  countrymen,  that  he  might  thereby 
become  the  hero  of  the  British  arms.  But,  believing  that  the 
benevolent,  plans  which  he  has  since  adopted  could  never  be 
executed  but  under  the  fostering  hand  of  well-directed  power, 
he  sought  a  field  for  the  exercise  of  his  goodness  and  ingenuity 
where  they  could  be  executed,  and  where  there  was  the  most 
obvious  demand.  In  doing  this,  success  has  attended  his  steps, 
and  he  has  erected  in  the  bosom  of  every  poor  man  a  temple  to 
gratitude  which  will  endure  as  long  as  benevolence  and  charity 
shall  be  considered  Christian  virtues."  * 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  foregoing  hearty 
defence  of  his  friend  by  Colonel  Baldwin  was  likely, 

*  Literary  Miscellany,  Vol.  I.     Cambridge,  1805. 


GRAVE  OF  "COUNT  RUMFORD  AT  AUTEUIL 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  633 

together  with  the  series  of  biographical  sketches  and 
encomiums  in  one  of  which  it  is  found,  to  come  under 
the  eyes  of  Rumford  himself.  Indeed,  it  is  probable 
that  he  received  a  copy  of  them,  transmitted  by  the 
writer. 

The  cemetery  in  which  the  remains  of  Count  Rum- 
ford  rest  is  very  small  in  area,  and  since  the  commune 
has  been  annexed  to  Paris  it  has  been  disused  for 
interments.  It  is  very  much  crowded  with  memorial 
stones,  so  that  they  almost  touch  each  other. 

The  grave  of  Rumford  is  marked  by  a  horizontal 
stone — pierre  tumulaire  —  and  by  a  perpendicular  monu- 
ment six  feet  high,  six  feet  in  breadth,  and  three  and  a 
half  feet  in  thickness ;  both  are  of  marble,  and  bear 
inscriptions  as  follows. 

That  on  the  monument  is  — 

A  la  Memoire 

de 
BENJAMIN  THOMPSON, 

Comte  de  Rumford, 
nd  en  1753,  &  Concord  [?]  pres  Boston, 

en  Amerique, 

mort  le  21  Aout,  1814,  h  Auteuil. 

Physicien  celebre, 

Philantrope  eclaire, 

ses  decouvertes  sur  la  lumiere 

et  la  chaleur 
ont  illustre'  son  nom. 

Ses  travaux  pour  ameliorer 

le  sort  des  pauvres 
le  feront  toujours  cherir 
des  amis  de  I'huhianite. 

The  flat  stone  is  thus  inscribed :  — 


634  Life  of  Cozint  Rumford. 

En  Baviere 

Lieutenant-General, 

Chef  de  1'Etat  —  Major-General, 

Conseiller  d'Etat, 
Ministre  de  la  Guerre. 

En  France 

Membre  de  I'lnstitut 

Academic  des  Sciences. 

Americans  who  have  occasionally  visited  the  ceme- 
tery have  cleansed  and  kept  fresh  these  monumental 
tablets. 

Count  Rumford  executed  his  last  will  and  testament 
while  he  was  on  a  visit  at  the  chateau  of  his  friend, 
Daniel  Parker,  Esq.,  at  Draveil,  September  28,  1812.* 
The  testator  describes  himself  as  "  Benjamin  Thomp- 
son, Count  of  Rumford,  Knight  of  the  illustrious 
orders  of  the  White  Eagle  and  of  St.  Stanislaus,  Lieu- 
tenant-General  in  the  service  of  his  Majesty  the  King 
of  Bavaria,  residing  now  at  Auteuil,  Department  of 
Paris."  He  appoints  Benjamin,  Baron  Delessert  and 
Mr.  Parker  his  executors.  Lafayette  is  one  of  the 
three  witnesses  to  the  will. 

The  Count  bequeaths  to  his  daughter  an  annuity  of 
four  hundred  dollars,  which,  in  addition  to  her  pension 
of  two  thousand  florins  (eight  hundred  dollars)  from 
the  King  of  Bavaria,  he  says,  "  will  be,  I  think,  amply 
sufficient  to  assure  her  a  respectable  and  comfortable 
maintenance  in  her  native  country  and  among  her  rela- 
tions and  first  friends,  where  I  am  very  desirous  that 
she  should  establish  her  residence,  being  persuaded  that 
this  situation  will  be  most  suitable  for  her,  and  will 
contribute  most  to  her  well-being  and  happiness." 

*  An  attested  copy  of  the  will  is  in  the  Donation  Book  of  Harvard  College,  in  the 
keeping  of  the  Treasurer. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  635 

The  testator  puts  other  funds  in  trust  with  his  execu- 
tors to  provide  for  his  daughter  in  case,  owing  to  polit- 
ical disturbances  or  any  other  cause,  her  pension  should 
fail  her. 

To  Harvard  College,  in  Cambridge,  Massachusetts, 
he  bequeathed  an  annuity  of  one  thousand  dollars,  with 
the  reversion  of  the  annuity  of  four  hundred  to  his 
daughter,  and  also  the  reversion  of  his  whole  estate, 
certain  specified  annuities  being  reserved:  — 

"For  the  purpose  of  founding,  under  the  direction  and  gov- 
ernment of  the  Corporation,  Overseers,  and  governors  of  that 
University,  a  new  institution  and  professorship,  in  order  to 
teach  by  regular  courses  of  academical  and  public  Lectures, 
accompanied  with  proper  experiments,  the  utility  of  the  physical 
and  mathematical  sciences  for  the  improvement  of  the  useful 
arts,  and  for  the  extension  of  the  industry,  prosperity,  happiness, 
and  well-being  of  Society. 

"I  give  and  bequeath  to  the  Government  of  the  United 
States  of  North  America,  all  my  Books,  Plans,  and  Designs 
relating  to  Military  affairs,  to  be  deposited  in  the  Library,  or  in 
the  Museum  of  the  Military  Academy  of  the  United  States,  as 
soon  as  an  Academy  of  this  nature  shall  have  been  established 
in  the  United  States. 

"  I  give  to  my  friend  Benjamin,  Baron  Delessert,  my  gold 
enamelled  snuff-box,  set  round  with  diamonds  ;  being  the  same 
which  was  given  me  by  his  Majesty  Francis  II.,  Emperor  of 
Austria. 

"  I  give  to  my  friend,  Daniel  Parker,  Esq.,  my  gold  enamelled 
watch,  with  the  gold  chain  and  seals  attached  to  it,  also  my 
gold-headed  cane. 

UI  give  to  Sir  Humphry  Davy,  Knight,  Professor  of  Chem- 
istry in  the  Royal  Institution  of  Great  Britain,  my  plain  gold 
watch,  as  a  token  of  my  esteem." 

In  a  sealed  letter  to  his  executors  the  Count  commits 
to  them,  in  trust,  certain  funds  assigned  for  the  benefit 


636  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

of  persons  having  "sacred  claims"  upon  him.  As  it 
was  his  declared  wish  that  his  directions  in  this  matter 
should  not  be  made .  public,  I,  of  course,  withhold 
them. 

In  a  year  after  the  Count's  death,  that  is,  in  Septem- 
ber, 1815,  his  executors  communicated  to  the  Corpora- 
tion of  Harvard  College  the  generous  provisions  of 
the  testator.  President  Quincy,  in  his  History  of  the 
College,  says :  — 

"  The  Corporation  took  immediate  measures  to  obtain  the 
property  and  provide  for  the  annuities,  in  which  they  received 
the  most  effective  and  earnest  co-operation  of  the  executors  ; 
and  that  board  directed  the  President  of  the  University  to  trans- 
mit to  them  '  an  expression  of  their  thanks,  and  of  the  full  and 
entire  approbation  of  their  conduct,  particularly  noticing  the 
promptitude  with  which  the  estate  has  been  adjusted,  the  cor- 
rectness of  the  principles  adopted  by  the  executors,  and  the 
perspicuous  and  satisfactory  manner  in  which  the  whole  has 
been  explained.1  Accept,  then,  gentlemen,'  the  Corporation 
add,  '  this  acknowledgment  of  our  sense  of  your  services,  and 
of  our  gratification  at  perceiving  that  Count  Rumford's  sound 
and  enlightened  mind  extended  beyond  his  life,  in  the  selec- 
tion of  friends  so  able  and  willi-ng  to  forward  his  honorable 
purposes.'  "* 

The  Rumford  Professorship  was  established  in  the 
College  by  the  Corporation  in  October,  1816,  and 
statutes  provided  for  it  were  approved  by  the  Over- 
seers. Jacob  Bigelow,  M.  D.,  a  highly  distinguished 
physician  of  Boston,  and  a  gentleman  of  large  culture 
in  art  and  science,  was  elected  and  confirmed  as  the 
first  Rumford  Professor,  and  was  inaugurated  on  the 
nth  of  the  following  December.  On  this  occasion  Dr. 
Bigelow  delivered  a  most  appropriate,  admirable,  and 

*  Vol.  II.  p.  3zi. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  637 

instructive  address  on  the  life  and  works  of  Count 
Rumford.  In  it  he  gave  a  comprehensive  sketch  of 
the  steady  progress  and  the  permanent  acquisitions  of 
philosophy,  and  illustrated  its  uniform  and  constant 
influence  in  ameliorating  the  condition  and  promoting 
the  happiness  of  mankind.  The  love  of  distinction, 
says  the  Professor,  may  prompt,  but  only  philanthropy 
and  patriotism  can  inspire  and  guide,  those  who  give 
themselves  to  the  arduous  and  exacting  service  of  sci- 
ence and  philosophy.  This  is  a  fitting  introduction  to 
a  concise  and  animated  exhibition  of  the  career  of 
Benjamin  Thompson,  from  his  humble  origin  and  his' 
frugal  surroundings,  through  the  devoted  labors  of  his 
life  and  his  benevolent  efforts  and  schemes,  to  the 
splendid  distinctions  which  he  reached  through  his  own 
industry,  skill,  and  genius. 

I  must  quote  the  concluding  paragraph  of  the  Pro- 
fessor's address :  — 

"  To  the  country  of  his  birth  Count  Rumford  has  bequeathed 
his  fortune  and  his  fame.  The  lessons  of  patriotism  which  we 
[officers'  and  students  of  the  College]  should  learn  from  his 
mernorable  life  are  important  and  convincing.  It  should  teach 
us  to  respect  ourselves,  to  value  our  resources,  to  cultivate  our 
talents.  Let  those  who  would  depreciate  our  native  genius 
recollect  that  he  was  an  American.  Let  those  who  would 
make  us  the  dependants  and  tributaries  of  the  Old  World 
recollect  that  he  has  instructed  mankind.  Let  those  who  would 
despond  as  to  our  future  destinies  remember  that  his  eye,  which 
had  wandered  over  the  continent  and  capitals  of  Europe,  settled 
at  last  upon  the  rising  prospects  of  this  Western  world.  For 
one  who  is  destined  to  labor  in  the  path  that  he  has  marked  out, 
and  to  follow  with  his  eyes,  though  not  with  his  steps,  the 
brilliancy  of  such  a  career,  it  may  suffice  to  acknowledge  that 
he  is  not  indifferent  to  the  honor  that  has  befallen  him  j  that  he 


638  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

is  sensible  of  the  magnitude  of  the  example  before  him  ;  that  he 
believes  that  the  true  end  of  philosophy  is  to  be  useful  to  man- 
kind ;  and  that  he  will  cheerfully  and  anxiously  enter  upon  the 
duties  that  await  him  ;  happy  if  by  his  efforts  he  can  hope  to 
add  even  a  nameless  stone  to  the  monument  of  philanthropy 
and  science  that  commemorates  the  name  of  him  of  whom  it 
may  in  truth  be  said  that  he  lived  for  the  world,  and  that  he 
died  for  his  country." 

Dr.  Bigelow  discharged  the  duties  of  Rumford  Pro- 
fessor of  the' Physical  and  Mathematical  Sciences  as 
applied  to  the  Useful  Arts  until  1827,  when  he  re- 
signed the  office.  Having  repeated  for  ten  successive 
years  his  course  of  lectures,  which  he  made  exceed- 
ingly interesting  to  the  students  by  illustrative  models, 
apparatus,  and  other  helps,  he  published  them  in  a 
substantial  volume,  entitled  the  "  Elements  of  Tech- 
nology "  (Boston,  1829),  —  thus  introducing,  if  I  am 
not  mistaken,  the  use  of  a  word  among  us  which  now 
serves  to  express  an  entire  system  of  education,  by  new 
methods,  to  new  uses.* 

*  Almost  fifty  years  after  the  delivery  of  his  Inaugural  at  Cambridge,  Dr.  Bigelow 
had  the  extraordinarily  happy  privilege  of  pronouncing  the  opening  address  at  the 
inauguration  of  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology,  in  Boston,  November  16, 
1865.  This  address,  as  a  plea  for  "  the  new  education,"  excited  profound  interest  and 
raised  an  animated  discussion  between  scholars  and  philosophers  in  this  community. 
Coming,  as  it  did,  from  a  devoted  pupil  and  lover  of  the  ancient  classics,  and  from  a 
scholar  who,  in  the  lore  of  the  past,  has  few  peers,  it  was  unfairly  represented  in  some 
quarters  as  a  depreciation  of  thorough  learning  in  the  old  humanities.  But  the 
author  nobly  and  in  admirable  temper  vindicated  his  position. 

Still  happily  welcomed  in  street,  in  social  meeting,  and  in  the  literary  assemblies, 
the  venerable  author,  the  honored  Nestor  of  his  profession,  having  for  seventeen  years 
before  he  resigned  the  office  presided  over  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sci- 
ences, Dr.  Bigelow  has  gathered  many  of  his  previously  published  productions  into  a 
volume  entitled  "Modern  Inquiries:  Classical,  Professional,  and  Miscellaneous." 
(Boston,  1867.)  The  volume  contains  the  two  addresses  to  which  reference  has  been 
made.  Not  feeling  the  burden  of  his  more  than  fourscore  years,  Dr.  Bigelow  was  one 
of  the  most  active  and  zealous  of  the  party  who,  on  the  first  year  of  the  opening  of 
the  great  roadway  to  the  Pacific,  took  their  route  across  the  continent  to  California. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  639 

The  Rumford  Professorship  at  the  College  remained 
without  an  incumben,t  after  Dr.  Bigelow's  resignation 
until  1834,  when  Mr.  Daniel  Treadwell  was  elected  to 
it,  discharging  its  duties  until  he  resigned  it  in  1845. 

Professor  Treadwell  also  as  an  incumbent  of  this 
office,  and  in  his  genius  and  scientific  attainments,  and 
likewise  in  the  many  improvements  and  inventions  which 
have  distinguished  his  name,  was  singularly  Well  quali- 
fied to  represent  the  objects  and  purposes  recognized  by 
Count  Rumford  in  his  foundation.  As  a  lecturer, 
clear,  concise,  and  effective,  the  Professor  greatly  inter- 
ested the  undergraduates  of  the  College,  and  he  was  an 
excellent  experimenter.  He  ranks  among  remarkable 
men  for  the  additions  which  he  has  made  to  the  in- 
dustrial arts.  Without  a  liberal  education,  starting  in 
early  life  as  a  silversmith,  he  added  many  ingenious 
tools  to  the  implements  of  his  trade.  He  invented  a 
machine  for  cutting  wood-screws,  —  before  made  by 
hand,  —  by  which  a  hank  of  wire  was  converted  into 
screws  at  the  rate  of  a  dozen  a  minute.  He  first  pro- 
posed the  supplying  of  Boston  with  pure  water,  point- 
ing out  the  sources ;  and  he  showed  the  importance  and 
economy  of  reservoirs  within  the  city.  The  practicabil- 
ity of  conducting  transportation  on  a  single  set  of 
tracks,  with  proper  sidings,  he  first  suggested  in  a  pub- 
lication in  the  Journal  of  the  Franklin  Institute,  in 
August,  1827.  He  constructed  a  power  printing-press, 
from  which  came  the  first  sheet  ever  printed  by  other 
than  hand-power  on  this  continent.  He  contrived  the 
first  machinery  for  spinning  cordage,  which  is  now,  in 
its  original  form  or  with  slight  modifications,  used  in 
France,  England,  Russia,  and  America.  This  machin- 
ery enabled  America  for  the  first  time  to  export  cord- 


640  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

age.  Professor  Treadwell  first  made  cannon  of  steel 
and  wrought  iron,  of  large  calibre,  in  a  manner  since 
repeated  by  Armstrong,  and  now  in  common  use.  For 
this  he  received  the  Rumford  Medals  from  the  Ameri- 
can Academy.  He  has  made  valuable  experiments  on 
the  force  of  fired  gunpowder,  which,  together  with 
some  valuable  papers  on  Force,  have  been  printed  in 
the  Proceedings  of  the  Academy.  He  collected  in 
Europe  nearly  all  the  valuable  apparatus  now  belonging 
to  the  Rumford  cabinets  at  the  College. 

The  Rumford  Professorship  was  filled  by  Eben  Nor- 
ton Horsford  from  1847  to  1863,  when,  on  his  resign- 
ing it,  the  present  incumbent,  Professor  Wolcott 
Gibbs,  was  appointed  in  the  year  last  named. 

"  The  Rumford  Fund "  for  this  Professorship  was 
credited  on  the  books  of  the  College  Treasurer,  in  1870, 
at  $52,848.00.  It  will  ever  be  a  pleasing  and  grate- 
ful memorial  of  Count  Rumford  that  his  name  stands 
thus  so  honorably  associated,  through  the  beneficent 
agencies  of  practical  philosophy,  with  our  venerable 
University  ;  and  that  his  Professorship  has  been  served 
by  a  succession  of  distinguished  men  marked  by  his  own 
best  characteristics  of  mind  and  genius.  We  recall  the 
time  of  his  own  boyhood,  when  with  young  Baldwin 
as  his  guide  and  patron,  after  long  walks,  he  reached  the 
halls  of  the  College,  and  there  nourished  the  ardor 
which  gave  the  impulse  to  his  mature  life.  We  recall 
also  another  scene  in  which  he  appears,  a  few  years  after, 
on  the  same  spot.  When  in  early  manhood,  amid  the 
passions  and  alarms  of  war,  he  was  brooding  over 
the  calumny  and  injustice  of  which  he  felt  himself  to  be 
the  subject,  he  hastened  to  Cambridge,  then  a  camp, 
that  he  might  help  in  removing  from  the  College  shelves 


Life  of  Co^tnt  Rumford.  641 

and  cabinets  the  books  and  the  humble  apparatus  of 
those  days.  He  must  have  remembered  these  scenes 
when  he  so  magnanimously  made  the  College  his  re- 
siduary legatee,  that  through  it  he  might  forever  be  of 
service  to  science. 

The  American  Academy  has  five  sheets  of  manu- 
script drawings  believed  to  have  been  made  by  Count 
Rumford.  They  were  pasted  upon  a  bandbox  belonging 
to  his  daughter,  and  were  for  many  years  in  Boston  at 
the  house  of  Mr.  James  F.  Baldwin.  This  box  was  pre- 
sented to  the  Academy  by  Mrs.  Baldwin.  The  draw- 
ings have  been  carefully  removed  and  preserved.  They 
were  probably  brought  home  by  the  Countess  among 
her  father's  effects,  and  put  to  a  womanly  use.  They 
are  as  follows  :  — 

1.  A  military  drawing  representing  field-works  and 
a  village,  with  streams  of  water  and  various  eminences. 

2.  Two  drawings,  —  an  elevation   and  section   of  a 
mortar  and  its  bed  with  an  elevating  screw. 

3.  Four  drawings  of  muskets  and  bayonets. 

4.  Architectural  drawings,   marked  in  pencil  "  Plan 
and  section  of  the  kitchen  in  the  House  of  Industry." 
It  represents    also  two  large    boilers  with  their  brick- 
work settings  and  smoke-flues. 

5.  "Third  floor  House  of  Industry." 

With  these,  from  the  same  box,  there  is  a  blank  form 
in  manuscript  of  a  cc  Table  of  Returns  and  Delivery  of 
Unprepared  Yarn,"  dated  July,  1795. 

The  drawings  of  the  mortar  and  muskets  are  done 
with  great  skill,  and  are  carefully  shaded. 

His  daughter's  experiences  and  movements  for  several 
years  after  the  death  of  her  father  are  to  be  traced 
chiefly  in  another  set  of  letters,  which  she  preserved, 
41 


642  Life  of  Coimt  Rumford. 

from  Sir  Charles  Blagden.  It  was  fortunate  for  her 
that  she  had  so  discreet  and  constant  a  friend.  His 
fidelity  to  her  and  his  authority  over  her,  by  the  proffer 
of  advice  in  the  form  of  positive  dictation,  prove  that 
he  really  intended  to  act,  in  place  of  her  father,  as  her 
guardian.  He  is  very  frank  in  telling  her  of  her  faults, 
and  on  occasions  which  called  for  it  he  administered 
severe  rebukes,  though  he  seemed  always  willing  to  allow 
that  her  intentions  were  good.  He  tells  her  that  she  is 
"  quite  a  child  in  character,  however  well  meaning." 
This  was  free  utterance  to  a  woman  forty-one  years  of  age. 
Sarah  remained  at  Auteuil  until  May,  1815,  when 
she  went  to  England  to  reside.  By  the  Count's  mar- 
riage-contract, his  house  at  Brompton  was  to  be  the 
property  of  his  wife  if  she  survived  him.  It  was  built 
on  a  leasehold,  which  was  to  expire  in  1863,  so  that 
neither  party  had  an  absolute  ownership  in  it.  Madame 
de  Rumford  very  generously  gave  the  Count's  Daughter 
all  her  rights  in  the  lease.  But  the  house  proved  to  be 
a  most  troublesome  charge  to  the  Countess,  and  her 
vexations  fill  a  large  part  of  her  correspondence  with 
Sir  Charles.  He  was  far  from  regarding  the  house  as 
the  wonderful  and  convenient  dwelling  which  Pictet  had 
represented  it.  Finding  that  the  Countess  was  always 
spending  money  on  repairs,  and  was  frequently  cheated 
by  tenants  whom  she  allowed  to  occupy  it,  he  was  con- 
stantly urging  her  to  dispose  of  the  lease,  and,  with  her 
maid,  to  take  lodgings.  She  was  very  unstable  in  her 
plans,  at  times  seeming  to  prefer  England  as  her  resi- 
dence, and  then  longing  to  go  to  Paris,  and  informing 
her  friends  there  of  a  purpose  of  visiting  them  ;  her 
excuse,  when  she  changed  her  mind,  always  being  some 
worrying  difficulty  about  her  house. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  643 

The  following  letter  was  written  by  her  to  Mr.  James 
F.  Baldwin  :  — 

"  BROMPTON  Row,  January  22,  1816. 

"DEAR  FRIEND, —  Having  heard  of  a  vessel  which  sails 
from  this  port  for  Philadelphia,  I  improve  the  opportunity  to 
acknowledge  the  reception  of  yours  of  December  9,  which 
arrived  safe.  I  am  exceedingly  obliged  to  you  for  the  atten- 
tion of  writing,  and  shall  learn  with  much  interest  all  particulars 
of  my  country  and  friends  you  may  have  to  communicate.  I 
am  ignorant  of  almost  all  events  ;  have  seen  very  few  Ameri- 
cans since  I  came  away,  and  have  seldom  received  any  letters. 
I,  however,  received  your  first,  which  I  answered,  and  found 
two  more  among  some  papers  I  left  at  Auteuil,  on  having  them 
restored  to  me  after  my  father's  death.  I  was  from  August  till 
the  following  May  at  Auteuil  at  that  time,  when  I  came  here, 
where  I  have  remained  ever  since. 

u  My  object  in  coming  was  principally  to  look  after  this 
house  and  have  it  repaired,  which  I  have  now  accomplished. 
The  last  of  the  workmen  went  away  about  .a  week  ago,  and 
having  commenced  immediately  on  my  arrival,  you  will  perceive 
it  was  several  months  I  have  been  engaged  in  these  repairs.  I 
propose  to  let  the  house  as  soon  as  a  convenient  opportunity 
offers,  and  most  likely  shall  return  to  France  and  establish 
myself  there.  I  like  well  enough  to  live  in  England,  and  might 
perhaps  prefer  it,  but  do.  not  view  it  as  so  much  to  my  interest. 
It  is  much  dearer  living  here  than  it  is  in  France,  nor  have  I  so 
many  friends  here  as  I  have  there.  Mons.  Delessert  and  Mr. 
Parker  were  very  particular  friends  of  my  father's,  and  are  very 
friendly  to  me.  It  is  through  Mons.  Delessert  I  receive  my 
Bavarian  pension,  and  indeed  my  other  little  annuity  left  me 
by  my  father ;  so  that  it  is  better  to  be  at  hand. 

"  I  will  thank  you  to  make  inquiries  about  my  brother  at 
Concord  [Mr.  Paul  Rolfe]  and  let  me  know,  for  I  wrote  to 
him  since  I  came  away,  and  not  receiving  any  answer  led 
me  to  fear  he  might  be  ill,  or  that  some  difficulty  had  befallen 
him.  I  have  not  received  any  intelligence  either  from  my 


644  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

friends  at  Baldwin  [Maine],  and  should  like  to  know  how  they 
all  do. 

u  I  perceive  by  one  of  the  letters  I  mentioned  to  have  found 
at  Auteuil  that  your  sister  Clarissa  is  married.  You  will  give 
my  love  to  her,  if  you  please,  and  tell  her  I  hope  she  is  well 
and  happy.  And  with  desiring  my  compliments  to  all  your 
friends  and  connections,  believe  me,  with  sincere  friendship, 

"  Yours  truly, 

«S.  RUMFORD. 

"P.  S.  —  I  forgot  to  ask  you  if  the  money  left  with  Mr. 
Hancock  be  safe,  and  going  on  well.  You  will  continue  to 
direct  to  the  care  of  Messrs.  Herries,  Farquhar,  &  Co.,  if  you 
please." 

After  having  fixed  upon  many  successive  dates  for 
going  to  Paris,  and  finding  herself  unable  to  leave 
Brompton,  she  at  last  went  to  Paris  in  1820,  and  re- 
mained there  three  years  under  the  protection  of  Baron 
Delessert  and  Sir  Charles.  The  latter  was  himself 
almost  all  the  trme  from  the  Count's  death  to  his  own 
away  from  England,  and  generally  resident  in  Paris,  — 
making,  however,  two  visits  there,  in  1817  and  1819, 
when  he  was  the  guest  of  the  Countess.  He  had  be- 
come infirm  and  gouty,  but  he  seems  to  have  been 
made  welcome.  The  package  of  his  letters  which  the 
Countess  left  inscribed  *  "  From  my  much  lamented 
and  respected  friend,  Sir  Charles  Blagden,"  includes 
the  summons  which  she  received  to  attend  his  funeral 
rites  in  the  Church  of  the  Oratoire  in  Paris,  he  having 
died  in  that  city,  March  26,  1820. 

The  letters  begin  with  one  dated  in  Paris,  August  15, 
1815,  and  through  the  whole  series  their  contents  are 
divided  between  references  to  her  troubles  about  her 
house  and  particulars  concerning  Madame  de  Rum- 
ford. 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  645 

That  lady  had  made  a  visit  to  England  in  1817,  and 
had  returned  to  Paris  in  September,  in  company  with 
Sir  Charles.  Lady  Davy  had  invited  her  to  partake  of 
her  hospitalities,  but  Madame  preferred  to  have  more 
freedom. 

Another  subject  on  which  Sir  Charles  found  it  neces- 
sary continually  to  prompt  the  Countess  —  administer- 
ing sharp  rebukes  for  her  dilatoriness  and  carelessness 
—  was  her  disregard  of  order  and  courtesy  in  neglecting, 
at  the  right  time,  the  steps  requisite  for  the  regular 
transmission  of  her  pension  from  Bavaria.  She  did  not 
attend  properly  to  the  obtaining  periodically  the  cer- 
tificate that  she  was  living,  so  that  the  representatives  of 
Bavaria  in  England  and  France  might  follow  the  rule 
in  the  case.  The  ambassador  in  London,  M.  Pfeffel, 
needed  to  exercise  some  forbearance  with  her. 

The  Countess  was  under  the  impression  that  Madame 
de  Rumford  did  not  much  desire  to  have  her  come  to 
Paris,  as  her  presence  and  the  relation  between  them 
might  possibly  be  embarrassing  to  the  widow  of  her 
father.  But  it  would  seem  that  the  latter  lady  was  con- 
siderate and  reasonably  friendly.  After  her  return  from 
the  visit  to  England  just  mentioned,  Sir  Charles  writes 
to  the  Countess,  from  Paris,  September  22,  1817  :  — 

"Madame  de  Rumford  is  in  excellent  health.  She  desires 
me  to  give  you  her  compliments,  and  to  tell  you  that  she  will 
write  at  the  same  time  as  your  god-daughter,  Sarah  [Aichner]. 
She  has  placed  the  latter  with  a  milliner,  that  by  learning  a 
trade  she  may  have  the  means  of  rendering  herself  independent. 
Whenever  you  were  mentioned  she  [Madame]  spoke  of  you 
with  some  interest,  and  even  expressed  a  wish,  that,  if  I  should 
establish  myself  at  the  Baths  of  Tivoli  [a  hotel  in  Paris]  this 
winter,  you  might  be  there  too.  And  she  gave  stronger  hints 
than  I  ever  heard  from  her  before,  that  she  greatly  disapproved 


646  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

your  father's  conduct  towards  you.  [Probably  in  dictating  that 
the  Countess  should  return  to  America.]  This  seems  to  me  a 
happy  disposition,  which  it  will  depend  upon  your  good  conduct 
to  improve." 

Dating  from  Paris,  October  24,  1817,  Sir  Charles 
writes  :  — 

"  This  will  be  brought  to  England  by  Monsieur  Arago,  a 
distinguished  gentleman  of  science  in  France,  and  my  good 
friend.  He  will  be  accompanied  by  Baron  Humboldt,  whom  I 
believe  you  have  met  at  Madame  de  Rumford's  or  at  your  father's. 
These  gentlemen  mean  to  stay  in  London  about  three  weeks, 
and  if  you  determine  to  come  hither,  it  will  be  an  excellent 
opportunity  for  you  to  make  the  journey  with  them.  M.  Arago 
has  kindly  promised  me  to  give  you  notice  when  they  set  out  on 
their  return,  which  will  probably  be  about  the  2Oth  of  Novem- 
ber. He  will  let  you  know  a  few  days  before  where  you  can 
communicate  with  him,  and  I  trust  that  you  will  be  exact  in 
making  your  arrangements  to  travel  with  him  and  the  Baron,  in 
case  you  finally  resolve  to  come.  When  I  consider  Madame 
de  Rumford's  way  of  life,  it  does  not  seem  to  me  likely  that  she 
will  find  it  convenient  to  be  of  much  use  to  you,  so  that  your 
coming  hither  or  remaining  in  England  should  be  determined 
chiefly  by  other  considerations." 

The  Countess  could  not  avail  herself  of  the  privilege 
of  having  such  fellow-travellers,  because  of  the  annoy- 
ance which  her  house  at  Brompton  was  giving  her. 
She  afterwards  wrote  to  Sir  Charles  that  it  was  her 
intention  to  be  in  Paris  on  Christmas,  1818.  But  as 
she  did  not  arrive,  Sir  Charles,  in  a  letter  to  her  of 
that  date,  writes  :  "  I  delivered  your  message  to  Ma- 
dame de  Rumford.  She  seemed  glad  to  hear  that  you 
thought  of  coming ;  but  expressed  a  strange  fancy, 
that  your  object  is  to  take  care  of  me,  in  case  I  should 
be  sick.  I  have  no  reason  to  think  I  shall  be  sick,  and 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  647 

if  I  should  be  so,  I  can  be  better  nursed  by  the  people 
belonging  to  this  house  than  it  would  be  decorous  for 
you  to  do.  Madame  de  Rumford  sometimes  talks  a 
little  at  random." 

This  frank  correspondent  informs  the  Countess  :  "My 
opinion  is,  that  Madame  would  be  ready  to  do  you  any 
little  services,  but  that  you  have  not  to  expect  great 
ones  from  her." 

After  her  stay  in  Paris  from  1820  to  1823,  during 
which  interval,  as  before  stated,  her  wise  friend  Sir 
Charles  Blagden  had  died,  the  Countess  returned  to 
England,  where  she  lived,  principally  at  Brompton,  till 
August,  1835,  when  she  came  to  America.  Here  she 
remained  till  the  last  of  July,  1838,  when  she  again 
went  abroad.  She  lived  mostly  at  Paris,  till  July,  1844, 
when  she  came  back  to  her  native  place,  occupying  the 
house  and  the  chamber  in  which  she  was  born,  where 
also  she  died,  on  December  2,  1852,  in  her  seventy- 
ninth  year.  It  appears  by  her  correspondence  with  her 
friend,  Mrs.  James  F.  Baldwin,  of  Boston,  that  the 
Countess  two  months  before  her  decease  had  been 
packing  and  storing  her  effects,  and  proposing  to  lease 
her  house  in  Concord,  with  a  view  again  to  visit 
Paris. 

That  house  in  Concord  has  interest  for  us  as  the  one 
in  which  the  Count  lived  after  his  first  marriage,  and 
whence  he  had  to  hurry  secretly  away  from  the  visit  of 
an  angry  mob  of  village  patriots.  The  use  to  which 
his  daughter  bequeathed  the  estate — in  fulfilment  of 
the  charitable  design  which  she  and  her  father  had 
more  than  fifty  years  before  planned  in  Munich,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  celebration  of  his  birthday  —  enhances 
its  interest.  Her  half-brother,  Paul  Rolfe,  died  in 


648  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Concord,  married,  but  childless,  on  July  18,  1819,  the 
Countess  being  the  heiress  to  his  and  to  the  maternal 
property.  The  estate  is  finely  situated  on  a  bend  of 
the  Merrimack  River,  from  which  it  is  separated  only 
by  a  county  road  running  behind  it,  —  spring  freshets 
having  already  made  threatening  inroad  in  its  rear.  It 
consists  of  ten  or  twelve  acres,  and  has  upon  it  two  cot- 
tages besides  the  mansion-house  built  by  Colonel  Ben- 
jamin Rolfe,  the  first  husband  of  the  Count's  first  wife. 
This  mansion  of  wood,  which  was  stately  and  costly 
for  its  day,  with  panelling  and  carving  and  wrought 
cornices,  has  not  been  improved  by  alterations  and 
additions  made  to  it  by  the  Countess.  Mr.  Joseph 
B.  Walker  of  Concord,  the  great-grandson  of  the 
Countess's  grandfather,  has  in  his  possession  an  admi- 
rably drawn  cc  Plan  of  the  Homestead  belonging  to  the 
Estate  of  Colonel  Rolfe,"  which  was  made  from  actual 
survey  by  young  Benjamin  Thompson,  and  which  is 
inscribed  with  his  name.  In  Rev.  Timothy  Walker's 
diary  are  references  to  the  building  of  this  mansion 
by  his  future  son-in-law.  Thus,  "  Monday,  i6th 
April,  1764,  visited  Colonel  Rolfe,  and  pitched  the 
place  for  his  house."  "  Monday,  I4th  May,  teams 
went  to  Rattlesnake  Hill  for  rocks  for  Colonel  Rolfe." 
He  obtained  his  granite  underpinning  from  a  famous 
quarry.  Three  hundred  men  are  at  this  time  constantly 
employed  there,  and  some  of  the  noblest  structures  in 
Boston,  like  the  Merchants'  Bank  and  Horticultural 
Hall,  have  been  built  from  it. 

By  her  last  will  the  Countess  devised  this  estate, 
and  the  sum  of  fifteen  thousand  dollars  in  money,  to 
trustees,  for  the  establishment  and  support  of  an  insti- 
tution to  be  known  as  "  The  Rolfe  and  Rumford 


SAB  AH  COUNTESS  or  RUMFGIID 


ave  048 


Life  of  Count  Rinnford.  649 

Asylum/'  cc  for  the  poor  and  needy,  particularly  young 
females  without  mothers/'  The  testator  enjoined  that 
the  children  to  be  received  into  it  should  be  exclusively 
natives  of  Concord.  The  money  bequest  has  ever  since 
been  at  interest,  and  in  the  year  1871  amounted  to 
about  forty-nine  thousand  dollars.  The  Institution, 
probably,  will  not  be  established  and  opened  for  some 
five  or  six  years,  when  it  is  hoped  that  the  fund  will 
have  so  far  increased  as  to  support  it.  In  case  the  town 
of  Concord  should  decline  to  receive,  or  should  fail 
to  undertake  and  faithfully  administer  this  trust,  the 
bequest  was  to  revert  "  to  Joseph  Amedie  Lefevre, 
hereafter  to  be  called  Joseph  Amedie  Rumford,  of 
Paris,  France,  his  heirs  and  assigns  forever."  To  this 
gentleman  the  Countess  also  bequeathed  the  sum  of 
ten  thousand  dollars.  She  also  left  a  bequest  of  fifteen 
thousand  dollars,  as  a  "  Rumford  Fund,"  to  the  New 
Hampshire  Asylum  for  the  Insane. 

The  Countess  gave  an  oil  portrait  of  her  father, 
taken  with  his  insignia  and  decorations  as  a  Knight  and 
a  Count  of  the  Empire,  to  Harvard  College  ;  in  one  of 
the  halls  of  which  it  has  since  hung,  among  the  por- 
traits of  the  benefactors  of  that  Institution.  Besides 
distributing  her  jewels  and  money  legacies  among  many 
friends,  she  left  to  Mr.  Joseph  B.  Walker  and  his 
family  the  following  pictures  :  — 

A  portrait,  in  oil,  of  the  Count,  in  the  uniform  of  a 
British  officer,  taken  at  the  age  of  thirty  in  London. 

A  portrait,  in  oil,  by  Kellerhofer,  of  the  Count  at 
the  time  when  he  was  sent  as  the  Bavarian  Ambassador 
to  London. 

A  portrait,  in  oil,  of  the  Countess  Sarah. 

A  portrait,  in  oil,  cabinet  size,  of  Captain  Lefevre. 


650  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

A  superb  portrait  in  oil  of  the  Elector  Charles  Theo- 
dore, by  Kellerhofer,  with  a  stately  frame. 

Portraits,  in,  oil,  of  the  Countesses  Nogarola  and 
Baumgarten. 

A  colored  chalk  portrait,  cabinet  size,  of  the  Baroness 
de  Kalbe. 

Original  portrait  of  Count  Rumford,  in  colored 
chalk,  cabinet  size,  by  Lane,  taken  in  1809,  —  the  one 
most  cherished  by  the  daughter. 

There  are  also  German  landscapes,  painted  in  water- 
colors,  by  ladies  of  Munich,  and  presented  to  Rumford 
for  his  signal  services  in  keeping  the  French  and  Aus- 
trian troops  out  of  the  city ;  views  in  the  English 
Garden  at  Munich;  a  pencil  sketch  of  M.  Pictet ;  and 
an  engraved  portrait  of  Baron  Hompesch. 

A  marble  monument,  with  an  appropriate  inscrip- 
tion, marks  the  grave  of  the  Countess  in  the  old  burial- 
ground  at  Concord. 

A  hall  prepared  for  social  purposes  and  for  the  deliv- 
ery of  lectures  was  opened  in  Concord,  in  January, 
1851,  on  which  occasion  an  address  was  made  by  Mr. 
C.  F.  Low  of  that  city,  embracing  an  interesting  sketch 
of  the  Count's  career,  taken  chiefly  from  Cuvier's  Eloge. 

It  is  affirmed  that  the  oldest  organized  institution 
in  this  country  offering  lectures  to  the  community  at 
large,  for  the  purposes  of  a  lyceum,  and  as  a  reposi- 
tory of  illustrative  apparatus,  is  that  which  is  still  in 
active  operation  in  the  town  of  Waltham,  Massa- 
chusetts, and  which  bears  the  name  of  "  The  Rumford 
Institute." 

The  house  at  Brompton,  described  so  admiringly  by 
Pictet,  was,  during  the  Count's  occupancy  of  it,  No. 
45  Brompton  Row.  It  is  now  numbered  168  Brompton 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  651 

Road.  It  remains  very  much  in  the  same  state  as  in 
the  Count's  time,  though  a  stucco  front  seems  to  have 
been  added.  The  house  had  been  leased  by  the  owner 
to  the  Rev.  Mr.  Beloe,  the  translator  of  Herodotus, 
who  gave  it  up  in  1810.  The  Countess  occupied  it 
and  leased  it,  as  we  have  seen,  alternately,  and  in  1837 
she  sold  the  lease  to  the  present  proprietors.  While  it 
was  still  in  her  possession  it  was  occupied  successively 
by  Sir  Richard  Phillips  and  Mr.  Wilberforce. 

I  am  under  obligations  to  Mr.  G.  Henry  Horst- 
mann,  United  States  Consul  at  Munich,  for  the  follow- 
ing interesting  letter,  describing  the  recently  erected 
statue  of  Count  Rumford,  and  the  present  condition 
of  his  English  Garden.  The  letter  is  dated  Munich, 
October  12,  1870:  — 

ct  The  bronze  statue  of  Count  Rumford  stands  in  the  Maxi- 
millian  Strasse,  the  finest  street  of  Munich,  perhaps  of  any  city 
of  Europe.  It  is  at  this  part  four  hundred  feet  wide,  planted 
with  quadruple  rows  of  trees,  the  crimson-blossomed  wild  chest- 
nut, and  the  American  sycamore,  with  wide  parterres  of  flowers 
and  grass-plots  on  either  side  the  pavement,  and  shady  walks 
between,  furnished  with  garden  sofas  for  pedestrians.  The 
monument  stands  in  front  of  the  new  government  offices, 
an  imposing  building  in  Italian  Gothic,  with  some  seven  hun- 
dred feet  front.  To  the  right  of  this  statue  stands  one  to 
General  Deroy.  On  the  opposite  side  of  the  street,  and  in 
front  of  the  National  Museum, — a  large  edifice  of  the  same 
dimensions  as  the  before-mentioned  building,  —  stand  in  sym- 
metrical positions,  Frauenhofer,  the  astronomer  and  inventor, 
a.id  Schelling,  the  philosopher,  the  tutor  of  King  Maximillian, 
erected,  as  the  inscription  says,  by  his  *  grateful  scholar.' 
These  four  memorials  are  all  of  uniform  size,  the  figures  being 
ten  feet,  English,  standing  on  granite  pedestals  of  eleven  feet  in 
height.  The  statue  of  Count  Rumford  was  modelled  by  Pro- 
fessor Caspar  Zumbusch,  of  Munich,  was  cast  at  the  Royal 


652  Life  of  Count  Rumford. 

Bronze  Foundry  here,  by  Ferdinand  von  Miiller,  and  was  erected 
in  1867.     The  inscription  on  the  front  of  the  pedestal  is  :  — 

BENJAMIN  THOMPSON 

Graf 
von  Rumford. 

and  on  the  reverse  :  — 

Errichtet  von 

MAXIMILLIAN  II.,  Koenig 

von  Bayen. 

"  On  a  scroll  in  the  hand  of  Rumford  is  inscribed,  — 

'  Englische  Garten 
Architecte.' 

"  It  was  made  at  the  King's  private  expense,  he  following 
the  example  of  his  father,  King  Ludwig,  in  thus  perpetuating 
the  memory  of  those  men  who  made  themselves  deserving  in  the 
annals  of  Bavaria.  Bronze  statues  of  Orlando  di  Lasso  and 
Gluck,  composers  and  musicians,  Westenrieder  and  Kreit- 
mayer,  historians  and  jurisprudents,  Gaertner  and  Kleuze, 
architects,  etc.,  adorn  other  parts  of  the  town. 

"Scarcely  a  city  of  the  world  can  boast  of  a  finer  park  than 
that  which  owes  its  existence  to  the  creative  mind  of  the  sub- 
ject of  your  biography  ;  and  every  citizen  of  Munich  feels 
grateful  to  the  man  through  whose  labor  a  dreary  waste  of 
pebbly  strand  and  marshy  ground  has  been  converted  into  a 
garden,  bearing  on  its  broad  breast  the  stateliest  forest-trees, 
groves  of  shady  elms  and  beeches,  with  wide  stretches  of 
undulating  lawns  between,  and  enlivened  with  streams  of  water, 
now  meandering  under  the  wide-spreading  branches  of  over- 
arching bushes,  and  at  the  foot  of  towering  hemlocks,  now 
stretching  out  into  a  wide  lake  with  green  islands  in  its  centre, 
and  now  dashing  over  rocks  in  roaring  cascades,  and  all  supplied 
by  arms  of  the  rushing  Isar,  which  have  been  led  here  to  beautify 
the  spot. 

"The  English  Garden,  as  it  is  called,  is  a  park  of  six  hun- 


S-TATUE  OF  COUNT  RUMFORD  IN  MUNICH 


Life  of  Count  Rumford.  653 

dred  acres.  Its  length  is  three  and  a  half  English  miles,  its 
breadth  about  one  and  a  half  miles.  It  was  planned  and  carried 
out  in  1789,  by  Count  Rumford,  at  that  time  one  of  the  Minis- 
ters of  the  Elector  Carl  Theodore.  It  was  subsequently  en- 
larged and  improved  by  Maximillian  Joseph,  the  first  King  of 
Bavaria,  and  was  further  embellished  with  monuments  by  his 
son,  Ludwig  the  P'irst.  Scarcely  more  than  a  hundred  paces 
from  the  Ludwig  Strasse,  one  of  the  handsomest  avenues  of  the 
city,  it  commences,  so  that  a  few  steps  bring  one  from  the  bus- 
tle and  noise  of  a  crowded  street  into  the  midst  of  quiet  rural 
scenery.  At  the  entrance  from  this  point  stands  a  marble 
statue  of  Youth,  by  Schwanthaler  the  elder,  its  inscription 
intimating  that  communion  with  nature  freshly  strengthens 
one  for  every  duty.  Farther  on,  following  the  carriage  road 
to  the  right,  is  the  monument  to  the  memory  of  Rumford.  It 
is  of  sandstone,  with  allegorical  figures  of  Plenty  and  Peace 
upon  its  face,  and  on  the  opposite  side  a  medallion  portrait  of 
Rumford." 

In  copying  for  me  the  German  inscriptions  on  this 
memorial,  —  which  have  been  inserted  on  previous 
pages,  — 'Consul  Horstmann  draws  my  attention  to 
that  almost  untranslatable  word  lustwandler,  which  I 
had  rendered  "  saunterer,"  and  which  he  renders  "pedes- 
trian." He  remarks  that  the  German  word  means  a 
person  who  is  walking  for  the  enjoyment  of  walking; 
but  is  not  represented  either  by  the  words  "pleasure- 
seeker"  or  "pedestrian"  (which  would  \sefussgaanger) 
as  opposed  to  one  who  rides,  or  "  promenader,"  or 
"  saunterer." 

The   writer   goes    on    to    describe  the  Garden  as  it 

now  is. 

"  Still  further  on,  but  more  towards  the  centre  of  the  park, 
upon  a  hillock,  is  the  <  Monopteros,'  a  Grecian  temple,  built  by 
Ludwig,  and  dedicated  to  his  father,  Maximillian  Joseph,  who 
did  so  much  in  sustaining  and  extending  what  Rumford  had 


654  Life  of  Coiint  Rumford. 

so  well  commenced.  From  here  is  a  pleasing  view.  Other 
monuments,  bridges,  and  pavilions  adorn  the  grounds,  which 
are  always  kept  in  the  most  perfect  order. 

"  The  English  Garden  is  the  great  resort  of  the  citizens,  who 
fully  appreciate  this  beautiful  spot,  and  who,  in  common  with 
all  Germans,  are  so  fond  of  living  in  the  open  air.  At  all 
seasons  of  the  year  are  people  to  be  seen  both  walking  and 
driving  along  its  winding  paths,  enjoying  nature  to  the  full.  In 
the  spring  of  the  year  it  is  musical  with  the  notes  of  the  nightin- 
gale, the  lark,  and  other  song-birds,  which  are  here  so  numer- 
ous. In  winter  the  lake  is  the  favorite  skating-ground,  and  is 
merry  with  the  sports  of  thousands  of  people  of  all  classes  and 
of  both  sexes.  In  summer  the  military  and  other  bands  per- 
form here. 

cc  The  thanks  of  the  people  are  due  to  Count  Rumford,  not 
only  for  the  creation  of  the  English  Garden,  but  for  the  impetus 
which  through  this  has  been  given  to  further  improvements. 
On  the  opposite  bank  of  the  Isar,  and  connected  with  it  by  a 
bridge,  is  the  new  park,  extending  up  the  river  for  over  a  mile 
and  a  half,  joined  to  the  city  by  two  bridges.  This  is  to  be 
further  extended,  and  is  already  in  progress,  so  that  ultimately 
this  belt  of  park-land  will  fully  encircle  more  than  half  the 
city,  and  will  furnish  a  drive  in  one  direction  of  ten  English 
miles. 

"When  I  first  came  to  Munich,  fourteen  years  ago,  the 
whole  of  the  right  bank  of  the  Isar  overlooking  the  city  was  a 
dreary  waste  of  stunted  meadow-land  without  a  single  bush 
upon  it  to  relieve  its  monotony.  It  is  now  closely  planted  with 
fine  trees  of  large  size  laid  out  in  groups,  the  paths  winding 
along  in  accordance  with  the  natural  undulations  of  the  ground  ; 
and  this  New  Park,  as  it  is  called,  is  a  worthy  continuation  of 
the  English  Garden. 

"  The  improvements  which  have  been  made  in  the  science 
of  arboriculture  have  made  possible  the  transplanting  of  very 
large  and  old  trees,  which  are  often  brought  from  a  great  dis- 
tance, so  that  although  only  ten  years  have  elapsed  since  the 
commencement  of  these  grounds,  they  have  no  longer  the  look 


Life  of  Count  Rum  ford.  655 

of  a  new  plantation.  All  the  trees  and  shrubs  flourish  re- 
markably well.  Perhaps  this  is  due  in  a  great  measure  to  the 
protective  spirit  of  the  people,  any  depredations  or  injury  to 
the  plants  being  entirely  unknown  here  ;  neither  is  there  any 
defacing  of  the  walks,  monuments,  benches,  or  other  accessories 
of  the  grounds. 

"  A  street  of  Munich  bears  the  name  of  Rumford." 


APPENDIX. 


(Seepage  13.) 

THE  following  document  has  reference  to  the  pro- 
vision made  for  Benjamin  Thompson  after  the  death 
of  his  father  :  — 

"  Articles  of  Agreement  made  and  fully  concluded  on  this 
Sixteenth  day  of  October,  A.  D.  1755,  in  the  Twenty-Ninth 
year  of  His  Majesty's  Reign,  between  Isaac  Snow,  Gentleman, 
as  Guardian  to  Hiram  Thompson,  Son  of  Capt.  Ebenezer 
Thompson,  late  of  Woburn,  deceased  ;  Benjamin  Flagg  and 
Hannah  Flagg  his  Wife  ;  Ruth  Thompson,  widow  of  Benjamin 
Thompson,  late  of  said  Woburn,  deceased,  all  of  Woburn  in 
the  County  of  Middlesex  ;  and  Joshua  Simonds  of  Medford, 
in  the  County  aforesaid,  Yeoman,  as  Guardian  to  Benjamin 
Thompson,  Grandson  to  said  Ebenezer,  deceased, —  Heirs  and 
Guardians  to  the  Heirs  of  said  Ebenezer  Thompson,  deceased  : 
Having  a  mind  amicably  to  settle  some  things  that  seem  to 
be  left  disputable  in  the  last  Will  and  Testament  of  the  said 
Ebenezer  Thompson  aforesaid,  deceased,  —  Have  mutually 
agreed  as  followeth,  viz.  :  First,  That  the  said  Ruth  Thompson 
shall  have  free  liberty  to  improve  one  half  of  the  Garden  at  the 
west  end  of  said  Deceased's  Mansion,  and  a  privilege  of  land  to 
raise  beans  for  sauce  for  her  own  use,  near  said  house,  during 
her  being  said  Benjamin's  widow  ;  and  the  keeping  of  the  Cow 
mentioned  in  said  Ebenezer's  last  Will  for  said  widow  is  to  be 
kept  on  the  produce  of  the  land  and  on  the  place  belonging  to 
Hiram.  Further,  the  said  widow  is  to  have  her  wood  men- 
tioned in  said  Will  put  of  the  land  devised  to  said  Benjamin, 
and  the  said  Snow  doth  hereby  oblige  himself  to  give  to  said 
42 


658  Appendix. 

widow  Eighty  weight  of  beef  out  of  Hiram's  part,  also  Eight 
bushels  of  rye,  Two  bushels  of  malt,  and  Two  barrels  of  Cider, 
for  the  present  year.  Further,  the  said  widow  is  to  have  liberty 
of  gathering  apples  to  bake,  &c.,  and  three  bushels  of  apples  for 
winter  yearly,  and  every  year  during  her  widowhood,  off  of  said 
place.  Further,  Benjamin  is  to  have  the  improvement  of  the 
land  his  Grandfather  gave  him  in  his  Will.  Further,  Whereas 
the  said  Benjamin  Thompson  was  ordered  by  his  Grandfather, 
in  his  last  Will  and  Testament,  to  pay  to  Hannah  Flagg,  &c. 
the  sum  of  £26  13  4,  Lawful  money,  we,  the  said  Benjamin 
Flagg  and  Hannah  Flagg  his  wife,  do  hereby  covenant  for  our- 
selves and  heirs,  that  we,  nor  they,  nor  any  of  them,  shall  sue 
the  said  Benjamin  nor  his  Guardian,  by  reason  of  said  Legacy, 
until  he  arrives  to  the  age  of  twenty-one  years.  Further, 
whereas  the  said  Ebenezer  left  a  pew  in  the  new  meeting- 
house in  said  Woburn,  that  was  not  disposed  of  in  his  Will,  we 
do  hereby  agree  that  the  said  pew  shall  be  for  the  use  of  the 
heirs  of  said  deceased,  and  Benjamin's  widow,  until  Hiram 
arrive  to  the  age  of  twenty-one  years. 

"  Furthermore,  the  said  Isaac  Snow  doth  hereby  oblige  him- 
self (in  his  capacity)  to  pay,  or  cause  to  be  paid,  unto  Benjamin 
aforesaid,  or  to  his  Guardian,  the  sum  of  Sixteen  shillings,  L. 
M.  yearly,  and  every  year,  until  the  said  Benjamin  arrives  to 
the  age  of  fourteen  years,  out  of  the  estate  of  said  Hiram.  It 
is  further  agreed  that  those  Books  which  are  in  a  chest  in 
said  house  shall  be  equally  divided  between  the  three  heirs  to 
said  estate.  It  is 'further  agreed  that  the  watch,  and  provisions 
in  the  house  and  grain  in  the  barn  (over  and  above  what  is  dis- 
posed of  to  the  widow),  in  case  the  Bonds,  Notes,  and  Book- 
debts  fall  short,  are  to  be  sold  to  pay  debts.  Also  the  clothing 
that  remains  of  Ebenezer  Thompson,  Jr.,  deceased,  is  to  be 
sold  to  pay  debts.  If  what  is  heretofore  assigned  to  pay  debts 
fall  short,  it  is  further  agreed  by  the  parties  that  Hiram's  Guar- 
dian shall  reimburse  the  one  half  that  is  wanting  out  of  Hiram's 
part,  Benjamin  Flagg  one  third  part,  and  Benjamin  Thompson's 
Guardian  one  sixth  part.  It  is  agreed  further,  if  what  is  assigned 
to  pay  debts  should  be  more  than  enough  to  discharge  them, 


Appendix.  659 

that  the  overplus  shall  be  equally  divided  between  the  three 
heirs.  It  is  further  agreed,  that  whereas  the  said  deceased  had 
hired  a  man  for  the  summer  past,  that  the  said  Snow  shall  pay 
his  wages  out  of  the  crop,  and  the  remaining  part  of  the  crop  is 
to  be  Hiram's. 

"  In  witness  whereof  the  said  parties  to  these  presents  have 
each  of  them  hereunto  set  their  hands  this  day  and  year  first 
above  written. 

"  ISAAC  SNOW,  Guardian. 

"  Signed  and  delivered  in  presence  of  us, 

EBENEZER  CONVERSE,  HANNAH    hxer    FLAGG, 

mark. 

ZEBADIAH  WYMAN,  RUTH  THOMPSON, 

CALEB  BROOKS,  JOSHUA  SIMONDS." 

BENJAMIN  FLAGG, 


(See  page  45.) 

The  following  are  fragments  of  letters  written  by 
Benjamin  Thompson  to  his  mother,  while  he  was  living 
at  Concord,  New  Hampshire. 

[No  date.] 

"  I  would  inform  you  that  I  have  been  very  well  as  to  my 
health  since  I  saw  you,  as  I  hope  you  have  been. 

u  I  can't  tell  the  exact  time  I  shall  come  to  Woburn  ;  it  may 
be  a  week  sooner  or  a  week  later  than  I  have  set,  for  aught  I 
know.  When  I  do  come  I  shall  tell  you  all  about  my  coming  to 
Pennicook  [Concord],  for  't  is  too  long  a  story  to  write  in  a  letter. 

"  So  I  believe  I  shall  -write  no  more  at  present,  only  that  I 

am  Your  dutiful  Son, 

"BENJAMIN  THOMPSON. 

"I  have  had  106  Scholars  at  my  School  [hiatus]  only  have 
70  at  once. 

"  To  MRS.  RUTH  PIERCE,  in  Woburn." 


66o  Appendix. 

"CONCORD,  Jan.  [missing]. 

• 

"  DEAR  MOTHER,  —  I  embrace  this  opportu of  letting 

you  know  that  w^:  are  well  in  our  health,  as  I  hope  soon  to 
hear  [that  you  are], 

"  I  should  have  been  to  Woburn  before  now,  as  I  talked  of, 
but  my  business  was  such  that  I  could  not  possibly  leave  home. 
But  I  hope  to  see  you  soon  if  it  holds  good  sleighing.  Mrs. 
Thompson  longs  to  see  you,  and  is  determined  to  come  down 
with  me  to  Woburn  some  time  this  winter.  Pray,  let  me  hear 
from  you  as  soon  as  possible,  and  you  will  oblige, 
"  Your  Affectionate  Son, 

"BENJ?  THOMPSON." 

"CONCORD,  Febry.  27,  17  [74]. 

"  DEAR  MOTHER,  —  I  send  this  to  let  you  know  that  we  are 
all  well,  as  I  hope  this  will  find  you  and  yours.  I  am  extremely 
sorry  to  hear  that  you-  have  been  unwell,  but  I  hope  you  will 
soon  be  hearty  again.  I  expect  to  come  down  in  the  Spring 
with  Mrs.  Thompson,  but  I  believe  I  shall  not  be  able  before 
the  latter  end  of  May.  I  have  nothing  extraordinary  to  write 
you.  All  is  peace  and  quietness  in  this  part  of  the  world. 
Mrs.  Thompson  desires  to  be  remembered  to  you  and  Father, 
and  to  all  my  Friends  and  Relations.  You  must  let  me  hear 
from  you  as  often  as  you  can. 

"  This  from  your  Dutiful  Son, 

"BENJ?  THOMPSON. 

"  Please  to  remember  me  to  Father,  Children,  and  all  Friends, 
especially  Natty  and  Abigail  Thompson." 


(See  page  67.) 

The  following  letter  of  Benjamin  Thompson  to  the 
minister  of  Trinity  Church,  Boston,  indicates  not  only 
some  of  his  movements,  but  also  the  direction  of  his 
sympathies,  at  a  critical  period  of  his  life. 


Appendix.  66 1 

"October  i?*,  1775. 

"  REV?  SIR,  —  I  came  out  of  Boston  a  few  days  before  the 
affair  at  Lexington  on  the  i9th  April,  and  have  since  not  been, 
able  to  return.  When  I  left  the  Town  I  little  imagined  that  a 
return  would  be  thus  difficult,  or,  rather,  impossible,  and  there- 
fore took  no  care  to  provide  for  such  a  contingency.  My  effects 
in  Town  I  left  at  my  lodging  in  Hanover  Street ;  and  my  land- 
ladies (Miss  Elizabeth  Clark  and  Miss  Elizabeth  Nowel)  who 
left  Boston  about  the  2Oth  August,  inform  me  that  when  they 
came  away  they  took  the  liberty  to  break  open  a  trunk  of  theirs 
in  which  I  used  to  keep  my  papers,  and  that  they  packed  up  my 
papers  together  with  my  clothes,  and  everything  else  they  could 
find  belonging  to  me,  and  put  them  all  into  an  old  square  box, 
marked  on  the  top  C — k,  N — 1,  and  on  one  side  or  end,  B.  T., 
which  box  they  left  in  the  lower  front  chamber  of  their  dwelling- 
house,  under  the  care  of  one  Mrs.  Cromartie,  to  whom  also 
they  committed  the  care  of  the  house. 

"  This  Box,  I  am  informed  by  a  person  who  has  lately  left 
Boston,  was  safe  in  the  before-mentioned  chamber  as  late  as  the 
middle  of  August.  But  as  it  contains  matters  of  the  greatest 
consequence  to  me,  and  as  I  cannot  depend  upon  Mrs.  Cro- 
martie's  care,  this  is  earnestly  to  beg  your  assistance  in  this 
affair. 

"  The  enclosed  letter  (which  I  beg  you  would  deliver  as  soon 
as  it  comes  to  hand)  is  a  duplicate  of  one  I  wrote  some  time 
ago,  which  I  since  learn  miscarried.  And  notwithstanding  in 
this  letter  I  desire  Major  Small  to  take  charge  of  the  Box  con- 
taining my  effects,  yet  if  you  would  be  so  kind  as  to  take  the 
same  into  your  care  and  possession,  I  should  be  exceedingly 
obliged,  and  would  not  wish  to  give  the  Major  the  trouble 
of  it. 

"  I  have  experienced  too  much  of  your  obliging  disposition  to 
doubt  of  your  readiness  to  serve  me  in  this  affair,  especially 
when  you  consider  to  what  an  unhappy  situation  I  am  reduced 
with  respect  to  my  affairs  in  Town.  But  whether  you  do  or  do 
not  take  charge  of  my  effects,  yet  I  beg  that  the  enclosed  letter 
may  be  delivered.  And  at  the  same  time  you  deliver  the  letter 


662  Appendix. 

you  will  be  so  kind  as  to  inform  the  Major  whether  you  take 
charge  of  them  or  not. 

"  If  Mr.s.  Cromartie  denies  her  having  any  such  Box  as  I 
have  described  in  her  possession,  yet  if  you*  will  take  the  trouble 
to  look  yourself  in  the  before-mentioned  front  chamber,  I  dare 
say  you  'will  find  it.  But  if  she  refuses  to  deliver  it  up,  or  if  the 
Troops  have  taken  possession  of  the  house,  and  dispute  your 
right  to  carry  it  off,  or  if  the  Box  is  not  to  be  found,  Major 
Small's  assistance  will  be  of  great  service,  which  I  dare  say  he 
will  lend  upon  such  an  occasion.  If  Mrs.  Cromartie  has  left 
the  house,  and  has  not  left  word  where  she  has  gone,  I  believe 
you  may  find  her  out  by  inquiring  at  Mrs.  Phillips'  in  Quaker 
Lane,  in  whose  family  she  has,  or  at  least  had,  a  daughter  who 
was  a  servant-maid,  and  who  can  doubtless  give  some  account 
of  her  mother. 

"  I  have  a  very  good  Hussar  Cloak  faced  with  scarlet  shal- 
loon, with  yellow  mock-spangle  metal  buttons,  and  an  old  plaid 
red  gown,  lined  with  crimson  shalloon,  in  Town,  which  I 
should  be  glad  you  would  likewise  take  under  your  care. 
These  I  am  told  are  at  Mr.  Elias  Parkman's  at  the  North  End, 
near  Winnisimmet  Ferry  ways.  In  what  Street  he  lives  I 
cannot  say,  but  believe  you  may  find  out  by  inquiring  at  Mr. 
William  Jackson's  store  at  the  Brazen  Head. 

"  If  you  should  be  so  kind  as  to  take  my  effects  into  your 
possession,  you  will  please  to  keep  them  safe  till  I  shall  have  the 
pleasure  of  seeing  you,  or  till  you  shall  hear  from  me,  or  from 
my  Executor  or  Administrator.  And  in  the  mean  time,  if  you 
should  leave  the  Town,  you  will  either  leave  them  with  Doctor 
William  Lee  Perkins,  or  some  other  person  that  you  can  depend 
on,  or  take  them  with  you,  as  you  think  most  for  my  safety. 

"  The  preservation  of  my  papers  is  an  affair  of  the  utmost 
Importance  to  me,  and  I  hope  that  a  consideration  of  that,  and 
of  my  present  situation,  will  serve  in  some  measure  as  an  excuse 
for  my  wishing  to  give  you  so  much  trouble  in  this  matter. 

"  I  cannot  conclude  without  informing  you  that  since  I  left 
Boston  I  have  enjoyed  but  a  very  indifferent  share  of  health, 
having  been  much  troubled  with  Putrid  Bilious  Disorders. 


Appendix.  663 

Since  the  I2th  of  August  I  have  been  confined  to  my  room  the 
greatest  part  of  the  time,  and  this  is  the  nineteenth  day  since  I 
have  had  a  settled  fever  upon  me,  which  I  fear  is  not  come  to  a 
crisis  yet.  My  Physician  gives  me  encouragement  of  getting 
better  after  a  while,  but  I  am  very  apprehensive  it  will  be  a  long 
time  before  I  shall  be  well. 

"  I  have  not  been  out  of  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  Bay 
since  I  saw  you.  Mrs.  Thompson  and  little  Sally  were  with 
me  during  the  month  of  May,  since  which  time  I  have  not  had 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  either  of  them. 

"  I  am,  dear  Sir,  with  the  greatest  truth  and  esteem, 
"  Your  real  friend  and  very  humble  Servant, 

"BENJ*  THOMPSON; 

"  To  the  REV.  MR.  SAM*.  PARKER, 
Trinity  Church,  Boston." 

This  letter  was  not  sealed.  It  was  probably  sent,  or 
intended  to  be  sent,  into  Boston  through  one  of  the 
British  sentries  on  Charlestown  Neck. 


(See  page  94.) 

In  disposing  of  a  part  of  his  estate  by  the  following 
indenture,  Mr.  Thompson  may  have  had  in  view  the 
purpose  more  clearly  indicated,  in  the  account  which 
succeeds  it. 

"  This  indenture  of  Agreement  made  this  2ist  day  of  June, 

1775,  between  Cyrus   Baldwin,  of  Boston,  in  the  Province  of 

.Massachusetts   Bay,  merchant,  on  the 'one  part,  and   Benjamin 

Thompson,  of  Concord,  in  the  Province  of  New  Hampshire, 

Esq.,  on  the  other  part. 

"  Witnessed! :  That  whereas  the  said  Thompson  has  this  day 
given  a  deed  to  said  Baldwin,  of  a  certain  tract  or  piece  of  land 
lying  in  Woburn  and  Wilmington,  containing  20  Acres  and 


664  Appendix. 

67  Poles;  And  as  said  Baldwin  has  this  day  drawn  an  order  for 
value  received  in  favor  of  said  Thompson  for  the  amount  of 
£32  17  2,  Lawful  Money  in  goods,  to  be  delivered  at  said  Bald- 
win's Store  in  Boston  :  It  is  agreed  between  the  Parties  that 
said  Baldwin  shall  not  be  obliged  to  deliver  said  goods  at  any 
other  place  than  his  store  in  Boston,  and  in  case  they  are  not 
called  for,  or  cannot  be  delivered  there  within  60  days  after 
sight  of  said  Order,  then  said  Baldwin  shall  deliver  up  the 
aforesaid  Deed  to  said  Thompson,  upon  said  Thompson's  de- 
livering up  to  said  Baldwin  said  Order,  and  paying  him  £  22 
5  4,  L.  M.,  otherwise  all  are  to  remain  in  full  force.  It  is  also 
agreed  between  the  Parties  that  if  upon  measuring  said  Land  it 
shall  appear  to  contain  more  than  20  Acres  and  67  Poles,  then 
said  Baldwin  shall  pay  to  said  Thompson  after  the  rate  of 
£jQ.  14  o  per  Acre,  for  all  it  shall  so  overrun  ;  and  in  case  it 
shall  fall  short  of  20  Acres  and  67  Poles,  then  said  Thompson 
shall  pay  to  said  Baldwin  after  the  rate  of  £  2  14  o  per  Acre  for 
all  that  it  shall  so  fall  short. 

u  In  Witness  Whereof,  we  have  hereunto  interchangeably  set 
our  hands  and  seals. 

"BENJ*  THOMPSON, 
CYRUS  BALDWIN." 


(See  page  94.) 

The  following  account,  copied  from  a  paper  in  the 
handwriting  of  Benjamin  Thompson,  dated  "  Woburn, 
Oct.  10,  1775,"  was  probably  made  out  in  view  of  his 
intention  to  leave  the  country. 

"A  Stated  of  Benj*  Thompson's  Affairs  in  the  Province  of  Massa- 
chusetts. 

"Due  from  Benj*  Thompson,  Viz'1  Old  Tenor. 

To  Mr.  Thos.   Courtney,  of  Boston,  upon  a  Note  of 

hand,  95   10  10 


Appendix.  665 

To   Misses  Clark  and  Nowell,  of  Do.,  for  about   13 

Weeks  Board,  at  5  £,  and  Washing,  75  o  o 

To  Mr.  Andrew  Dexter,  of  Do.,  on  a  Note,  £22  10, 

and  on  account,  about  £7  10,  30  o  o 

To  Mr.  Dehone,  of  Do.,  about  900 

To  my  Aunt,  Hannah  Flagg,  of  Woburn,  part  of 

Legacy  165  10  o 

To  the  Rev.  Sam1.  Williams,  of  Bradford,  on  a  Note, 

about  55     o     o 

"  I  have  not  settled  with  Mr.  Timothy  Walker  of  Wilmington,  my 
former  Guardian,  but  I  believe  we  are  nearly  upon  a  balance. 

"  Due  to  Benj?  Thompson. 

From  Mr.  Cyrus  Baldwin,  on  an  Order  for  value  re- 
ceived for  goods,  131     07^ 

From  Benj.  Tay,  of  Wilmington,  a  Note  of  hand  upon 

interest,  21     66 

From  Mr.   Benj.  Converse,  of  Woburn,  about   15  or 

20  £,  15-00 

From  Mr.  Jno.  Butters,  of  Wilmington,  on  a  Note,  14     3     3 

For  the  Land  which  I  now  own  in  Woburn  and  Wil- 
mington I  have  been  offered  upwards  of  750     o     o 
and  it  rents  for  33  £  per  annum" 

I  have  also  before  me  a  copy  of  a  deed  by  which,  on 
the  previous  I4th  of  September,  Mr.  Thompson  con- 
veyed some  land  in  Wilmington  to  Josiah  Pierce. 


(See  page  150.) 

From  a  mass  of  interesting  documents  relating  to 
Colonel  Thompson's  military  services  in  America, 
copied  from  the  originals  in  the  government  offices  in 
London,  and  kindly  sent  to  me  by  Dr.  H.  Bence 
Jones,  I  select  the  following. 


666  Appendix. 

1780,  June  7. —  Lord  George  Germaine  writes  a  de- 
spatch   to    Sir    H.    Clinton,    New    York,    saying    that 
Captain  Murray,  on  the  part  of  Brigadier-General  Rug- 
gles,  proposes  to  raise  the  King's  American  Dragoons. 

One  of  his  propositions  was  that  no  person  who  shall 
hold  a  commission  in  this  regiment  shall  receive  any 
pension  or  allowance  from  government  for  support 
as  an  American  sufferer,  and  no  pay  until  half  the  num- 
ber of  privates,  or  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  men,  are 
raised,  and  then  only  half-pay  till  the  enlistment  is 
completed. 

The  King  ordered  the  plan  to  be  sent  to  Sir  H. 
Clinton. 

1781,  May.  —  Only  part  of  the    appointments    for 
Brigadier-General  Ruggles  had  arrived  out. 

1781,  July.  —  Thompson  acts  as  Deputy  Inspector- 
General  of  Provincial  forces  in  North  America,  to  send 
out  accoutrements,  and  the  Lords  of  the  Treasury 
order  him  a  percentage  which  came  to  £  120,  in  August, 
1781. 

1781,  September  30.  —  Lord  George  Germaine  wrote 
a  private  letter  to  Sir  H.  Clinton  introducing  Mr. 
Thompson,  and  thanking  Sir  Henry  for  the  favor  and 
protection  he  has  shown  Mr.  Thompson  in  giving  him 
the  command  of  a  regiment  of  Light  Dragoons,  "which 
I  trust  will  be  raised  in  a  manner  to  entitle  the  officers 
of  it  to  your  approbation.  Lieutenant-Colonel  Thomp- 
son shows  at  least  a  spirit  and  zeal  for  the  service  in 
quitting  for  a  time  an  agreeable  and  profitable  civil 
situation  in  the  hopes  of  being  useful  to  his  country, 
and  by  his  military  conduct  showing  himself  not  un- 
worthy of  the  protection  which  you  have  granted  to 
him.  If  you  do  him  the  honor  to  converse  with  him, 


Appendix.  667 

you  will  find  him  well  informed,  and,  as  far  as  theory 
goes,  a  good  officer  in  whatever  you  may  think  fit  to 
employ  him.  I  can  answer  for  his  honor  and  his 
ability,  and  am  persuaded  he  will  ever  feel  attached  by 
gratitude  to  you  for  the  very  kind  and  obliging  manner 
in  which  you  have  protected  him  and  the  regiment 
under  "his  command." 

On  the  4th  of  October,  Thompson  appointed  Mr. 
Fisher  a  clerk  in  his  office,  to  receive  his  half-pay  of 
thirteen  shillings  a  day. 

A  despatch  of  Lord  George  Germaine's  to  General 
Leslie,  in  answer  to  Leslie's  of  December  30,  says:  "I 
am  glad  you  will  have  Colonel  Thompson's  assistance 
in  forming  what  cavalry  you  have.  His  offer  to  serve 
in  your  army  until  the  season  for  action  to  the  north- 
ward arrives,  corresponds  with  that  public  good  and 
zeal  for  the  King's  service  which  prompted  him  to 
quit  his  civil  situation  and  engage  in  the  military  line." 

General  Leslie  writes  to  Clinton  of  Thompson,  on 
January  29,  1782  :  "  From  the  unwearied  attention  and 
diligent  efforts  of  that  officer  the  cavalry  has  become 
respectable,  and  I  have  everything  to  expect  from  this 
improvement." 

Thompson  writes  to  Leslie  from  Daniel's  Island, 
February  20  :  "  We  arrived  without  being  so  fortunate 
as  to  meet  the  enemy  we  came  in  search  of." 

And  on  February  25,  the  same  to  the  same: 
did  not  expect,  after  the  affair  of  yesterday,  the  enemy 
would  so  soon  have  put  it  in  my  power  to  congratulate 
you  upon  another  defeat  of  their  troops.  We  had  the 
good  fortune  this  morning  to  fall  in  with  a  chosen 
corps  under  the  command  of  General  Marion  in  person, 
which  we  attacked  and  totally  routed,  killing  a  con- 


668  Appendix. 

siderable  number  of  them,  taking  sixteen  prisoners,  and 
driving  General  Marion  and  the  greater  part  of  his  army 
into  the  Santee,  where,  it  is  probable,  a  great  many  of 
them  perished." 

A  despatch  of  Leslie  to  Clinton,  dated  March  12, 
1782,  says  he  had  the  cavalry,  one  hundred  men  of  the 
joth  regiment,  the  Volunteers  of  Ireland,  and  sixty 
Yagers.  He  speaks  of  this  very  handsome  piece  of 
service,  and  adds,  referring  to  Thompson :  "  I  assure 
your  Excellency  that  I  have  much  regret  to  part  with 
this  enterprising  young  officer,  who  appears  to  have  an 
uncommon  share  of  merit  and  zeal  for  the  service,  and 
could  he  and  his  troop  be  spared  to  act  in  this  part 
where  cavalry  are  so  much  wanted,  I  am  confident  it 
would  tend  much  to  his  Majesty's  service." 

On  April  15,  Clinton  writes  to  Leslie:  <c Those 
parts  of  your  letters  to  which  you  have  referred  for  a 
more  full  explanation  to  Lieutenant  Thompson  I  shall 
answer  after  consulting  with  him  upon  the  subject." 

Thompson,  writing  on  August  6  to  Carlton,  says 
that  the  regiment  was  completed,  and  had  twenty  men 
over  and  above  the  number  stipulated  in  the  original 
proposals.  He  asks  for  the  advantages  promised. 

In  General  Orders  of  August  29,  thanks  were  given 
for  services,  and  permanent  rank  assigned. 

On  September  12,  Carlton  writes  to  Lord  North: 
"  As  the  officers,  by  very  particular  exertions  of  activity 
and  diligence,  have  raised  their  regiment,  and  have  spared 
no  expense  for  that  purpose,  I  cannot  help  concurring 
with  the  Board  of  General  Officers  that  they  should 
have  permanent  rank  in  America,  and  half-pay  upon 
the  reduction  of  their  regiment." 

On  December  12,  1782,  General  Robinson  makes  a 


Appendix.  669 

report,  with  instructions  in  case  of  a  sudden  attack  on 
Long  Island.  "If  an  attack  is  made  on  Huntingdon, 
in  that  case  the  troops  are  to  assemble  at  their  respec- 
tive alarm-posts,  and  instantly  to  march  to  the  support 
of  the  troops  attacked  under  Colonel  Thompson.  It  is 
expected  that  the  militia  in  every  alarm  will  cheerfully 
assemble  and  co-operate  with  his  Majesty's  forces  in 
opposing  the  enemy." 

In  a  memorial  dated  March  14,  1783,  addressed  to 
Carlton,  Thompson  humbly  begs  that  he  and  his  corps 
may  be  employed  in  the  East  Indies,  or  any  other  part 
of  his  Majesty's  dominions,  and  offers  to  raise,  from 
the  men  now  serving  in  his  Majesty's  Provincial  forces, 
a  very  fine  battalion  of  light  infantry.  This,  with 
General  Leslie's  certificate,  Carlton  sends  to  Towns- 
hend,  the  successor  of  Lord  George  Germaine. 

On  the  2ist  of  March,  Carlton  authorizes  Thompson 
to  complete  the  King's  American  Dragoons  to  six 
troops  of  sixty  men  each,  and  to  raise  four  companies 
of  light  infantry  of  fifty-two  rank  each. 

On  the  4th  of  April,  Thompson  writes  to  Carlton 
asking,  that,  as  there  seems  no  longer  any  prospect  of 
service  in  the  West  Indies,  his  regiment  may  go  to 
Nova  Scotia,  there  to  remain  and  do  duty,  and  that  he 
may  have  leave  'of  absence  to  go  to  England  to  solicit 
in  behalf  of  himself  and  the  corps  that  they  may  be 
employed  in  the  East  Indies,  or  in  some  other  part  of 
his  Majesty's  dominions  where  their  services  may  be 
wanted. 

Leave  of  absence  was  granted  Thompson  on  April  1 1. 

On  the  8th  of  June,  Thompson,  being  then  in  Lon- 
don, writes  to  Lord  North,  from  Pall  Mall  Court, 
"  Having  assisted  in  drawing  up  the  representation  and 


670  Appendix. 

petition  of  the  commanding  officers  of  his  Majesty's 
Provincial  Regiments,  and  having  been  ordered  by 
them  to  solicit  for 'them  in  this  country  that  the  prayer 
of  their  petition  be  granted,  I  take  the  liberty  of 
troubling  your  Lordship.  They  are  extremely  anxious 
to  know  their  fate,  as  regards  permanent  rank  and  half- 
pay." 

As  the  result  of  this  solicitation,  and  in  answer  to 
Carlton's  petition  of  September  12,  1782,  above  given, 
Lord  North  replies,  on  June  n,  that  the  King  has 
been  graciously  pleased  to  approve  Sir  G.  Carlton's 
recommendation.  And  on  the  ifth  of  June,  his  Lord- 
ship writes  that  it  is  his  Majesty's  intention  that  all 
the  Provincial  regiments  shall  be  removed  to  Halifax, 
where  they  are  to  be  disbanded. 

On  July  6,  1783,  Thompson  writes  to  Carlton,  con- 
gratulating him  on  the  resolution  of  Parliament  to  give 
half-pay  to  the  Provincial  officers,  and  telling  him  all 
he  had  done  with  Lord  North  and  members  of  Parlia- 
ment. He  says  his  Majesty  has  been  graciously  pleased 
to  approve  of  the  King's  American  Dragoons  having 
the  full  establishment  of  field  officers,  as  was  originally 
intended,  and  that  I  should  be  promoted  to  the  rank 
of  Colonel.  He  adds  :  "  I  cannot  help  flattering  myself 
that  ?his  arrangement  will  be  agreeable  to  your  Ex- 
cellency, and  that  I  shall  be  returned  in  your  list  of 
the  Provincial  officers  for  half-pay  as  Colonel.  The 
rank  to  me  is  of  infinite  importance,  as  I  am  going 
abroad,  in  a  short  time,  with  a  view  to  foreign  service. 
But  the  half-pay  is.  also  an  object,  as  I  have  little  else 
left  to  depend  on  except  my  industry." 

The  letter  to  Carlton  authorizing  the  promotion  of 
Thompson  has  been  given  in  the  text,  pp.  146,  147. 


Appendix.  67  x 

^  On  the  loth  of  October,  1783,  Carlton  wrote  to 
Colonel  Thompson,  who  was  then  on  the  Continent: 

cThe  resolution  of  Parliament  to  give  half-pay  and 
permanent  rank  in  America  affords  me  great  satisfac- 
tion. Your  zeal  and  assiduity  on  this  occasion  appear 
to  have  been  such  as  your  friends  might  have  ex- 
pected." 

On  the  loth  of  October  the  King's  American  Dra- 
goons were  disbanded  on  the  lands  appropriated  for 
them  many  miles  up  the  river  St.  John. 


"America  and  West  Indies.     No.  146. 

"  To  His  Excellency  Sir  Guy  Carlton,  K.  B.,   General  and  Com- 

mander-in-  Chief  'of  all  His  Majesty's.  Forces  in  North  America, 

within  the  Colonies  lying  in  the  Atlantic  Ocean  from  Nova  Scotia 

to  West  Florida,  inclusive,  &ca.,  &ca.,  &ca. 

"The  Memorial  of  BENJAMIN  THOMPSON,  ESQ^,  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  Commandant  of  the  King's  American  Dragoons,  for 
himself,  and  in  behalf  of  the  Officers  and  men  under  his  Com- 
mand. 

"Humbly  sheweth,  — 

u  That  the  Officers  of  the  King's  American  Dragoons  are 
chiefly  Young  men  of  the  first  families  and  connections  in 
North  America,  who,  at  a  very  early  period  of  the  War, 
entered  into  the  King's  service. 

"That,  except  the  Adjutant,  who-  is  from  the  iyth  Regiment 
of  Light  Dragoons,  they  are  all  Americans,  and  have  suffered 
very  considerably  by  the  Rebellion. 

"  That  in  the  Event  of  Peace  and  the  Independency  of  the 
American  Provinces,  all  their  hopes  of  returning  to  their  former 
situations  will  be  at  an  end,  and  they  will  be  reduced  to  the 
greatest  distress.  Their  friends,  involved  in  the  common  ruin, 
will  be  unable  to  assist  them,  and  having  no  Profession  but  the 


672  Appendix. 

Profession  of  Arms,  in  which  they  have  been  trained  up  from 
their  Youth,  they  will  be  unable  to  provide  for  themselves  by 
their  Industry  in  any  other  Calling. 

"  That  they  are  all  passionately  fond  of  the  Service  and 
desirous  of  remaining  in  it,  and  are  willing  to  go  to  any  quarter 
of  the  Globe,  provided  they  can  be  employed. 

"  The  Memorialist  further  begs  leave  to  represent,  that  a 
great  proportion  of  the  Non-commissioned  Officers  and  private 
men  under  his  Command  have  been  trained  up  in  the  Service 
from  their  Youth,  and  would  prefer  remaining  in  it  to  any  other 
occupation. 

"  That  the  Regiment  is  completely  appointed,  with  Arms, 
Accoutrements,  and  every  article  of  Horse  Appointments  and 
Furniture,  to  the  full  establishment  of  Six  Troops  of  Sixty  men 
each  ;  together  with  four  Field  pieces,  with  their  Harness,  &ca., 
complete,  for  a  Troop  of  flying  Artillery. 

"  The  Memorialist,  therefore,  and  being  himself  anxious  to 
continue  in  the  King's  Service,  humbly  begs  that  Your  Ex- 
cellency would  be  pleased  to  recommend  him  and  his  Corps 
to  His  Majesty,  to  be  employed  in  the  West  Indies,  or  in  any 
other  part  of  His  Majesty's  Dominions  where  their  Services 
may  be  wanted. 

"  The  Memorialist  further  begs  leave  to  represent  to  your 
Excellency,  that  in  case  more  Troops  should  be  wanted  for  any 
service,  he  will  undertake  to  raise  from  amongst  the  men  now 
serving  in  His  Majesty's  Provincial  Forces,  a  very  fine  Bat- 
talion of  Light  Infantry,  Men  trained  to  Arms  and  inured  to 
Service,  and  Officers  all  young  men,  unincumbered  with 
family  connections,  who  have  been  bred  up  in  the  Service,  arid 
who,  from  their  Zeal  and  bravery,  as  well  as  from  their  Suffer- 
ings as  American  Loyalists,  are  objects  worthy  of  the  counte- 
nance and  protection  of  Government, 

[Signed]  «B.  THOMPSON,  Ll.  Col1. 

Comm*.  King's  Am.  Dragoons. 

"NEW  YORK,  14*  March,  1783." 


Appendix.  673 

Copy  of  a  Letter  from  The  Honorable  Lieutenant-General  Leslie, 
commanding  His  Majesty's  Troops  In  the  Southern  District  of 
North  America,  to  His  Excellency  Sir  Henry  Clinton,  K.  B., 

Commander-ln-Chlef,t3c.,&c.,t3c., dated  Charlestown,  March  12, 
1782. 

"  SIR,  —  I  had  the  honor  to  inform  your  Excellency  that 
Lieu*  Col.  Thompson  having  offered  his  service  during  his  stay 
here,  I  had  appointed  him  to  the  command  of  the  cavalry. 
He  has  put  them  in  exceeding  good  order,  and  gained  their 
confidence  and  affection. 

"  I  am  very  happy  to  acquaint  you  of  his  Success  on  a  late 
Excursion  upon  the  Santee,  which  he  made  with  the  Cavalry, 
supported  by  a  detachment  of  one  hundred  men  of  the  30^ 
Reg!,  the  Volr?  of  Ireland,  and  60  Yagers.  He  had  the  good 
fortune  to  fall  in  with  a  body  of  the  enemy's  cavalry  under  the 
command  of  Horiy,  which  he  nearly  destroyed  ;  and  afterwards 
defeated  and  dispersed  with  considerable  loss  the  Force  which 
Marion  had  assembled  to  oppose  him,  all  that  he  had  been  able 
to  collect  on  this  side  the  Santee.  I  inclose  to  your  Excellency 
Col.  Thompson's  report  to  me  of  this  very  handsome  piece  of 
service,  and  I  assure  your  Excellency  that  I  have  much  regret 
to  part  with  this  enterprising  Young  Officer,  who  appears  to 
have  an  uncommon  share  of  merit  and  zeal  for  the  service  ;  and 
could  he  and  his  Corps  be  spared  to  act  in  this  Part  where 
Cavalry  are  so  much  wanted,  I  am  confident  it  would  tend 
much  to  the  benefit  of  His  Majesty's  Service. 
"  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  &ca. 

[Signed]  "ALEXi:  LESLIE." 

(In  Colonel  Thompson's  handwriting.) 

"  To  his  Excellency  Sir  Guy  Car  It  on,  K.  B.,  General  and  Com- 
mander-in- Chief  of  all  his  Majesty's  forces  within  the  Colonies  ly- 
ing on  the  Atlantic  ocean  from  Nova  Scotia  to  West  Florida,  &c." 

"  Lieu-1  Col.  Thompson  begs  leave  to  return  your  excellency 
his  unfeigned  thanks  for  all   the  distinguished    marks  of  your 
goodness  to  him,  particularly  for  the  last  most  flattering  proof 
43 


674  Appendix. 

of  your  excellency's  approbation,  that  of  appointing  him  to  the 
command  of  a  body  of  Light  Troops,  which  were  to  have  been 
raised  for  his  Majesty's  service  in  the  West  Indies,  had  not 
peace  taken  place.  As  there  seems  to  be  no  longer  any  pros- 
pect of  service  in  that  quarter  of  the  World,  upon  a  supposi- 
tion that  the  late  accounts  from  Europe  should  be  confirmed, 
and  that  the  plan  for  sending  troops  from  home  to  the  West  Indies 
should  be  laid  aside,  Lieutenant-Colonel  Thompson  trusts  to 
your  excellency's  goodness  for  forgiveness  if  his  request  should 
be  improper,  and  he  humbly  begs  leave  to  sollicit  your  excellency ; 

"That  the  King's  American  Dragoons  maybe  dismounted 
immediately  and  their  cavalry  appointments  be  packed  up  and 
lodged  with  the  public  stores  of  the  army. 

"  That  the  regiment  may  be  sent  to  Halifax,  New  Windsor, 
Cumberland,  or  some  other  part  of  Nova  Scotia,  by  the  first 
opportunity,  there  to  remain  and  do  duty  till  further  orders. 

"  That  upon  their  arrival  at  the  place  of  their  destination, 
such  of  the  men  as  have  families,  and  others  desirous  of  making 
settlements,  have  leave  granted  to  them  for  that  purpose,  to  be 
discharged  if  they  require  it. 

u  That  Lieu*  Colonel  Thompson  may  have  leave  to  go  to 
England,  there  to  sollicit,  in  behalf  of  himself  and  the  Corps, 
that  they  may  be  employed  in  the  East  Indies  or  in  some  other 
part  of  his  Majesty's  dominions  where  their  services  may  be 
wanted. 

"  Lieut.  Colonel  Thompson  further  begs  leave  to  sollicit  your 
excellency,  — 

"That  in  consideration  of  the  great 'Losses  the  officers  of 
the  King's  American  Dragoons  must  suffer  by  disposing  of  their 
horses  at  this  place,  they  may  be  allowed  to  take  one  horse 
each  to  Nova  Scotia,  and  that  a  conveyance  may  be  provided 
for  them. 

"  And  that  in  consideration  of  the  sums  that  have  been 
advanced  by  the  officers  of  the  Regiment  in  purchasing  Troop 
Horses  at  a  higher  price  than  has  been  allowed  by  Government 
(which  sums,  for  the  credit  of  the  regiment  and  the  good  of  the 
service,  they  have  been  induced  to  furnish  by  voluntary  con- 


Appendix.  675 

tributions)  they  may  be  reimbersed  in  the  whole  or  in  part  out 
of  the  monies  that  may  arise  by  the  sale  of  those  Horses,  should 
they  be  disposed  of  in  that  way. 

"B.  THOMPSON,  L*  Col. 

Command'  King's  A.  Dragoons. 
"  NEW  YORK,  4th  April,  1783." 

.   Colonel  Thompson  to  Lieutenant-  Colonel  Delancey. 

"NEW  YORK,  8th  April,  1783. 

"  SIR,  —  Inclosed  is  an  account  of  money  expended  by  me  for 
the  King's  service  during  the  time  I  had  the  honor  to  command 
the  troops  at  Huntingdon,  which  amount  I  am  to  request  you 
would  be  pleased  to  lay  before  his  excellency  the  Commander- 
in-chief.  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  Sir, 

"  Your  most  obedient  humble  servant, 

"•B.  THOMPSON,  L«  Col. 

Command1-  King's  Am.  Drag. 
"L*.  COL.  DELANCEY,  Adjutant-General,  &c." 

Colonel  Thompson  to  Lieutenant-Colonel  Delancey. 

«  NEW  YORK,  13th  April,  1783. 

"  SIR,  —  I  have  had  the  honor  to  lay  your  letter  to  me  of 
this  day's  date  before  his  excellency  General  Robertson,  who 
has  added  a  certificate  to  my  account,  which  I  hope  will  meet 
with  his  excellency  the  Commander-in-chiefs  approbation.  I 
am  sorry  to  add  that  General  Robertson  seems  to  have  some 
doubts  with  respect  to  the  Propriety  of  his  signing  any  other 
certificate.  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  Sir, 

"  Your  most  obedient  humble  servant, 

«  B.  THOMPSON,  Ll.   Col. 

"  L*.  Col.  DELANCEY,  Adjutant-General,  &c." 

Addressed  to  Colonel  B.  Thompson^  probably  by  Car/ton. 

"  NEW  YORK,  10  October,  1783. 

«  SIR,  —  I  have  received  your  letter  of  the  6th  July  with  the 
several  'inclosures  therein  mentioned,  and  you  may  be  assured 
that  the  resolution  of  Parliament  to  give  the  British  American 


676  Appendix. 

» 

officers  half-pay  (with  which  also  I  find  they  will  all  have  per- 
manent rank  in  America)  affords  me  a  very  sincere  satisfaction. 

"  Your  zeal  and  assiduity  on  this  occasion  appear  to  have 
been  such  as  your  friends  might  have  expected,  and  I  am  sensi- 
ble of  your  attention  to  me  in  writing  so  fully  on  the  subject. 
The  American  officers  have  in  my  opinion  so  fair  a  claim  to 
half-pay,  that  I  hope  the  grant  will  finally  be  made  for  the  full 
establishment  for  their  several  regiments  without  the  least  ex- 
ception. 

"  Your  promotion  to  the  rank  of  Colonel  is  notified  to  me 
from  the  Minister,  but  as  he  has  given  me  no  instructions  re- 
specting Major  Murray,  you  must  be  sensible  that  I  cannot  take 
it  upon  myself  to  give  him  an  appointment  which  would  be  con- 
sidered as  a  grievance  by  all  the  elder  majors  in  the  Provincial 
Line. 

"  I  am,  &c." 


(See  page  585.) 

The  following  charming  letter  from  Dr.  Franklin  to 
Madame  Lavoisier,  while  her  first  husband  was  still 
living,  shows  how  pleasant  had  been  his  relations  with 
that  lady:  — 

"PHILADELPHIA,  October  23,  1788. 

"  I  have  a  long  time  been  disabled  from  writing  to  my  dear 
friend  by  a  severe  fit  of  the  gout,  or  I  should  sooner  have 
returned  my  thanks  for  her  very  kind  present  of  the  portrait 
which  she  has  herself  done  me  the  honor  to  make  of  me.  It  is 
allowed,  by  those  who  have  seen  it,  to  have  great  merit  as  a 
picture  in  every  respect ;  but  what  particularly  endears  it  to  me 
is  the  hand  that  drew  it.  Our  English  enemies,  when  they 
were  in  possession  of  this  city  and  my  house,  made  a  prisoner 
of  my  portrait  and  carried  it  ofF  with  them,  leaving  that  of.  its 
companion,  my  wife,  by  itself,  a  kind  of  widow.  You  have 


Appendix.  677 

replaced    the    husband,   and    the   lady   seems   to   smile    as  well 
pleased. 

"  It  is  true,  as  you  observe,  that  I  enjoy  here  everything  that 
a  reasonable  mind  can  desire,  —  a  sufficiency  of  income,  a  com- 
fortable habitation  of  my  own  building,  having  all  the  con- 
veniences I  could  imagine  ;  a  dutiful  and  affectionate  daughter 
to  nurse  arid  take  care  of  me,  a  number  of  promising  grand- 
children, some  old  friends  still  remaining  to  converse  with,  and 
more  respect,  distinction,  and  public  honors  than  I  can  possibly 
merit.  These  are  the  blessings  of  God,  and  depend  on  his  con- 
tinued goodness  ;  yet  all  do  not  make  me  forget  Paris,  and  the 
nine  years'  happiness  I  enjoyed  there,  in  the  sweet  society  -of 
a  people  whose  conversation  is  instructive,  whose  manners  are 
highly  pleasing,  and  who,. above  all  the  nations  of  the  world, 
have,  in  the  greatest  perfection,  the  art  of  making  themselves 
beloved  by  strangers.  And  now,  even  in  my  sleep,  I  find  that 
the  scenes  of  all  my  pleasant  dreams  are  laid  in  that  city,  or  in  its 
neighborhood. 

u  I  like  much  young  M.  Dupont.  He  appears  a  very  sensible 
and  valuable  man,  and  I  think  his  father  will  have  a  great  deal 
of  satisfaction  in  him. 

"  Please  to  present  my  thanks  to  M.  Lavoisier  for  the  No- 
menclature  Chimique  he  has  been  so  good  as  to  send  me  (it  must 
be  a  very  useful  book),  and  assure  him  of  my  great  and  sincere 
esteem  and  attachment.  My  best  wishes  attend  you  both  ;  and 
I  think  I  cannot  wish  you  and  him  greater  happiness  than  a 
long  continuance  of  the  connection.  With  great  regard  and 
affection,  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  my  dear  friend,  &c. 

«  B.  FRANKLIN.* 

*  Sparks's  Franklin,  Vol.  X.  pp.  361,  36*. 


INDEX. 


ADAMS,  President  John,  letter  fronf,  359  ;  let- 
ters to,  250,  412 

Aichners,  the,  308,  530,  548  -  550,  557,  567,  645. 

Amanscoggin,  545. 

American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  Rum- 
ford  s  donation  to  the,  250,  281,  293. 

Appleton,  John,  ibfoll. 

Austin,  Nicholas,  64 

BALDWIN,  Clarissa,  512. 

Baldwin,  Cyrus,  512,  663. 

Baldwin,  George  R.,  vii,  512 

Baldwin,  James  F.,  220,  512  ;  letters  to,  593, 
596,  643. 

Baldwin,  Colonel  Loammi,  12,  16,  71,  82,  98, 
207,  210,  254,  257,  367  •  letters  from,  24,  36,  39, 
73,  96,  202,  211,  213,  219,  278,  293,  295,  340, 
341,  342,  365,  370,  512,  552,  553 ;  letters  to,  20, 
23,  24,  38,  40,  51,  52,  75,  78,  83,  96,  208,  217, 
280,  281,  283,  294,  297,  361,  362,  363,  410,  413, 
519,  S32>  533.  546;  his  sketch  of  Rumford, 
631,  632  ;  his  death,  595. 

Baldwin,  Loammi,  the  younger,  512. 

Baldwin,  Mrs.  Margery,  214;  letters  from,  96; 
letters  to,  215,  216,  273,  345;  her  death,  371. 

Baldwin  apples,  375,  377. 

Banks,  Sir  Joseph,  108  ;  letters  to,  241,  244. 

Barnard,  Captain  and  Mrs.,  547,  594. 

Barnard,  Rev.  Thomas,  19. 

Bassanville,  Countess  de,  583  -  585. 

Bathing,  408. 

Baumgarten,  Countess,  311,  317  foil.,  612,  650. 

Bavaria,  its  condition  in  1784,  and  Thompson's 
reforms,  164  foil. 

Belknap,  Jeremy,  D.D.,  letter  to,  345. 

Ben  net,  Mrs.,  225. 

Bernard,  Sir  Thomas,  383  -385,  397,  434,  439, 
440,  524- 

Bigelow,  Jacob,  iii  ;  Rumford  Professor,  636  - 
638. 

Blagden,  Sir  Charles,  226,  236,  429,  437,  516 
foil.,  540,  554,  589  foil.  ;  wishes  to  rnarry  Miss 
Sarah  Thompson,  332  ;  letters  from, 
554,  590  -  592,  645,  646  ;  his  death,  644. 

Bond,  Nathaniel,  553. 

Bourghausen,  Mme.,  157. 

Burgom,  Mrs.  E.  G-,  515,  516 

Butters,  John,  665. 


CALORIMETER,  617,  625. 

Ca"pen,  Hopestill,  25. 

Carlton,  Sir  Guy,  146,  668  foil. 

Chardon  Street  charities  follow  Rumford's  meth- 
od, 508. 

Charles  Theodore,  Elector  Palatine,  Duke  of 
Bavaria,  158;  letter  to,  161. 

Charlestown,  Mass.,  67. 

Chimneys,  233. 

Clapp,  Samuel,  362,  366. 

Clark,  Alvan,  268. 

Clark,  Miss  Elizabeth,  661,  665. 

Cobbett,  William,  505. 

Concord,  N.  H.,  41,  65  foil.  ;  Miss  Thompson's 
fund  for  clothing  poor  children  at,  288  ;  Rum- 
ford's  donation  to,  292,  295  foil.,  341,  373. 

Conservation  and  correlation  of  forces  discov- 
ered by  Rumford,  wsfoll. 

Converse,  Benjamin,  665. 

Corliss,  G.  H.,  268 

Courtney,  Thomas,  664. 

Curwen,  Samuel,  \\^,foll. 

Cuvier,  Baron,  his  Eloge  on  Rumford,  9,  92, 
616. 

DAVY,  Sir  Humphry,  417  foil.,  432,  439>  535. 

626,  635  ;  not  the  discoverer  of  the  dynamical 

theory  of  heat,  486  ;  letter  te,  419. 
Delessert,  Benjamin,  610,  614,  634,  635,  643. 
Deux  Fonts,  154. 
Dexter,  Andrew,  665. 
Douglass,  Barnard,  280. 
Dublin,  203. 

EDINBURGH,  446. 

England's  ignorance  about  America,  102. 
English  Garden  at  Munich,  description  of,  195, 
651  ./W/.  ;  monument  to  Rumford  in  the,  196. 
Ericsson,  J.  B.,  268. 

FIREPLACES,  235. 

Flagg,  Hannah,  97,  657-659,  665. 

Fraizer  or  Frazier,  211,  225. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  compared  with  Rumford, 
i  -  3,  200  ;  letters  from,  in  the  British  Museum, 
in  ;  letter  to  Mme.  Lavoisier,  676. 

GARDINER,  Dr.  Sylvester,  \ibfoll. 
Garnett,  Dr.  Thomas,  433,  436. 


Index. 


679 


Germaine,  Lord  George,  103  foil,  115,  120,  666 

foil. 

Georgia,  Thompson  Secretary  of,  102,  106. 
Gerrish,  Colonel,  84. 
Gibbon,  Edward,  152  foil. 
Green,  William  and  Eleonora,  325-327. 
Grenville,  Lord,  letter  from,  337,  338  ;  letter  to, 

337- 
Guizot's  account  of  Mme.  Lavoisier  de  Rum- 

ford,  574  foil. 
Gunpowder,  experiments  on,  51,  67,  82,  109,  123. 

HARE,  Dr.  Robert,  268. 

Harvard  College  and  the  Rumford  Medal,  265  ; 

Rumford  Professorship  in,  635-638. 
Heat,  241  foil.,  617;  its  propagation  in  fluids, 


Heriot's  Hospital,  446. 

Hertuch,  F.  I.,  455. 

Horsford,  Eben  N.,  Rumford  Professor,  640. 

Horstmann,  G.  H.,  letter  from,  651. 

Huntington,  L.  I.,  129  foil. 

INDIAN  pudding,  how  to  be  eaten,  200. 
Instrument-makers,  410. 

JACKSON,  Dr.  James,  letter  from,  446. 
Jackson,  William,  662. 
Johnston,  John,  n. 
Joly,  A.,  letter  from,  453. 

KING,  Rufus,  350  ;  letters  from,  351,  352,  354, 
355.  357  I  letters  to,  353,  355,  356,  358. 

LAURENS,  Henry,  118,  152. 

Lavoisier,  Mme.    See  RUMFORD. 

Leroy,  Colonel,  584. 

Leslie,  General  Alexander,  letters  from  and  to, 

667  -  669,  673. 
Light  and  heat,  medal  given  for  discoveries  in 

regard  to,  241  foil. 
Long  Island,  i^zfoll. 
Loyalists,  American,  55  foil.,  112,  122,  148,  290. 

McHENRY,  James,  letters  to,  352,  359. 

Mannheim,  168,  169. 

Massachusetts     Historical     Society,     Rumford 

chosen  member  of  the,  346. 
Mathias,  T.  J.,  235. 
Mendicity,  175  fo'l. 
Munich,   167  foil.,  272  foil,  453  foil,  536,  537, 

540,  541,  569  foil.,  651. 

NAVAL  artillery,  109. 

Nogarola,    Countess,    301  foil.,   536,    54^,   549. 

569,  570,  612,  650  ;  her  death,  532. 
Nowel,  Miss  Elizabeth,  661,  665. 

ORDER,  Rumford's  love  of,  603,  620. 


PALMERSTON,  Lord  and  Lady,  226,  229,  233, 
33i.  524.  S3'.  535  :  their  deaths,  525,  527, 
54°- 

Palmerston,  the  late  Lord,  524. 

Paris,  539  foil. 

Parker,  Daniel,  607,  623,  634,  635. 

Parker,  Rev.  Samuel,  letter  to,  661. 

Parkman,  Elias,  661. 

Parkman,  Samuel,  25. 

Parsons,  Chief-Justice  Theophilus,  anecdote  of, 
238. 

Pauperism,  170  foil 

Pearson,  Eliphalet,  letter  from,  254,  letter  to, 
256. 

Pennicook,  287,  659. 

Perkins,  William  Lee,  662. 

Pickering,  Colonel,  letter  to,  351. 

Pictet,  A.,  423,  469,  537  ;  his  account  of  Rum- 
ford,  6  foil.,  91,  102,  123,  129,  146,  154,  155, 
i57.  348,  36°,  363.  426,  445,  650. 

Pierce,  Josiah,  6/0//.,  366;  letter  to,  278;  his 
death,  374,  512. 

Pierce,  Mrs.  Ruth  (Simonds  Thompson),  Rum- 
ford's  mother,  5  foil ,  45,  96,  413,  511,  512, 
552,  657-659  ;  her  son's  allusions  and  gifts  to, 
from  Europe,  209,  217,  219,  278,  596  foil.  ;  an 
oider  from,  280;  letter  from,  -562  ;  letters  to, 
342,  365,  598,  599,  659, 660  ;  her  death,  n,  599. 

Portsmouth,  46  foil. 

Preble,  Henry,  607. 

Prime,  Rev.  Ebenezer,  138. 

RENWICK,  Professor  James,  viii. 

Rolfe,  Colonel  Benjamin,  42,  43. 

Rolfe,  Paul,  43,  643 ;  the  settlement  of  his 
mother's  estate,  285,  341,  373;  his  death, 
647  ;  his  estate,  648. 

Royal  Institution  of  Great  Britain,'  358,  361, 
530,  535,  618  ;  its  foundation  by  Rumford,  and 
subsequent  progress,  378  foil. 

Royal  Society,  230,  235,  242  foil.  :  Thompson 
elected  a  member,  108. 

Rumford,  Benjamin  Thompson,  Count.  For  a 
synopsis  of  the  events  of  his  life  see  the  Con- 
tents prefixed  to  this  volume.  His  writings  r 
papers  in  the  Philosophical  Transactions,  169  ; 
account  of  the  establishment  for  the  poor  at 
Munich,  ijofoll. ;  "  Fundamental  Principles 
on  which  General  Establishments  for  the  Re- 
lief of  the  Poor  may  be  formed,"  189 foil.; 
"  Essay  on  the  Selection  and  Preparation  of 
Food,"  191  ;  other  writings,  218,  219,  231,  232, 
237,  238  ;  essays  published  in  Boston,  293  ; 
"  Proposals  "  for  forming  the  Royal  Institu- 
tion, 385  foil;  "Prospectus  :>  of  the  Royal 
Institution,  397  ;  "  Essay  on  the  Propagation 
of  Heat  in  Fluids,"  458  foil. :  "  Account  of 
several  New  Experiments,  with  Remarks  re- 
specting Chemical  Affinity,"  469;  "Essay  on 


68o 


Index. 


the  Propagation  of  Heat,"  472  ;  "  Inquiry 
concerning  the  Source  of  the  Heat  which  is 
excited  by  Friction,"  474  ;  "  Essay  on  Kitchen 
Fireplaces  and  Utensils,"  491  ;  "Observations 
concerning  Open  Chimney  Fireplaces,"  501 ; 
"  Of  the  Salubrity  of  Warm  Rooms,"  502  ; 
"On  the  Salubrity  of  Warm  Bathing,"  408; 
"  On  the  Management  of  Fires  in  Closed 
Fireplaces,"  504 ;  "  Of  the  Use  of  Steam  as  a 
Vehicle  for  transporting  Heat,"  504;  "The 
Nature  and  Effects  of  Order,"  603;  papers 
read  before  the  French  Institute,  604,  605 ; 
before  the  Royal  Society,  606 ;  three  essays, 
606.;  letters  from  him,  20,  23,  24,  38,  40,  48, 
51,  52,  07,  70,  72,  75,  78,  81,  83,  84,  117,  161, 

2O8,  212,  2l6,  217,  241,  244,  250,   256,  277,  28l- 

283,  294,  337,  343,  345,  353,  355,  356,  358,  361, 
363.  385,  410,  412,  413,  419,  514,  535,  537,542, 
544,  548,549,  551,  558-561,  564,  566-  572,  596  - 
death,  599,  659-661  ;  his  drawings,  27,  30;  his 
608  foil.  ;  his  will,  befall.  ;  his  portraits,  649. 

Rumford,  why  chosen  by  Thompson  as  his  title, 
41. 

Rumford  Food  Laboratory,  240. 

Rumford,  Marie  P.,  nee  Paulze,  veuve  Lavoisier, 
Mine.,  de,  369,  521  foil.  ;  differences  between 
her  and  Rumford,  548,  550,  554.  556;  her 
separation  fiom  Rumford,  564;  Guizot's  sketch 
of  her  Jife  and  character,  576  foil.  ;  the  Count- 
ess Rumford's  estimate  of  her  character,  602 
foil.  ;  her  gifts  to  the  Countess,  526,  642  ;  let- 
ter from  Franklin  to,  676. 

Rumford  medal  in  charge  of  the  Royal  Society, 
241  foil. ;  list  of  recipients,  247  ;  'n  charge  of 
the  American  Academy,  -zytfoll.  ;  list  of  re- 
cipients, 268. 

Rumford  roasters,  237. 

Rumford,  Sarah,  Countess.     See  THOMPSON. 

Russell,  Thomas,  552. 

SHERMAN,  Rev.  Josiah,  15;  Thompson's  cari- 
cature of,  27. 
Signals,  marine,  109,  115. 
Simcoe,  Caplain  J.  G.,  142  foil 
Simonds,  Joshua,  letter  from,  17. 
Simonds,  Ruth.     See  PIERCE. 
Sinclair,  Sir  John,  letter  to,  277. 
Smoke  nuisance,  237. 
Snow,  Mrs.,  367. 
Soup-houses,  505. 
Stacey,  Mr.,  208. 
Sullivan,  John,  552. 


TAXIS,  Count,  301,  302,  313  foil.  ;  his  death, 
330,  572- 

Tay,  Benjamin,  665. 

Thomas,  Alexander,  75  -  77. 

Thompson,  Benjamin,  Ebenezer,  and  James, 
ancestors  of  Count  Rumford,  5. 

Thompson,  Benjamin,  Count  Rumford.  See 
RUMFORD. 

Thompson,  David,  4. 

Thompson,  Mrs.  Ruth.     See  PIERCE. 

Thompson,  Mrs.  Sarah  (Walker  Rolfe),  43 
foil.  ;  66,  70,  72,  88,  90,  96,  660,  663  ;  her 
death,  43,  210 ;  Rumford  resigns  her  estate, 
285. 

Thompson,  Sarah,  Countess  of  Rumford,  414, 
552,  663  ;  her  birth,  45  ;  her  visit  to  England. 
210  foil. ;  her  autobiography,  221  foil,  ;  her 
pension,  281,  634,  643  ;  received  at  court  as 
Countess,  281  ;  her  return  to  America,  363 
foil.  ;  in  America,  510 ;  her  last  visit  to  her 
father,  558,  586  foil.  ;  her  lue  after  Rumford's 
death,  641  foil.  ;  her  death,  647  ;  letters  from 
her,  215,  216,  273,  345,  511,  532,  533.  54J,  SV3- 
643;  letters  to  her,  512,  514,  518  fol:  535, 
544,  548,  549,  551,  554,  558-561  b$4i  566- 
572,  590-592,  645,  646. 

Thomson,  Dr  Thomas,  629,  630. 

Tories,  American,  55  foil.,  112,  122,  148,  290. 

Tyndall,  Professor  John,  quoted,  484. 

Treadwell,  Daniel,  268;  Rumford  Professor, 
639,  640. 

WALKER,  Judge,  286,  341. 

Walker,  Rev.  Timothy,  42,  43,  67  foil.,  72,  84 
foil.,  91,  665:  letters  to,  67,  70,  72.  84;  his 
death,  210;  his  legacy  to  his  granddaughter, 
286. 

Walter,  William,  D.D.,  95. 

Welsh,  Mr.,  294,  340. 

Wentworth,  Governor  John,  46  foil-,  59. 

West  Point,  the  command  of,  offered  to  Rum- 
ford,  348  foil. 

White  Mountains,  survey  of  the,  48  foil. 

Willard,  President  Joseph,  215,  254,  257,  281, 
282  ;  letters  to,  216,  282,  412. 

Williams,  Rev.  Samuel,  36,  665  ;  letter  to,  48. 

Winthrop,  Robert  C,  v 

Woburn,  67,  71,  73  foil. 

YOUMANS,  E.  L.,  484,  485. 
Young,  Dr.  Thomas,  406,  432,   438,  440,  444: 
his  sketch  of  Rumford,  628. 


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